Thulesilme' Children
by Teanna
Summary: After the Ring War: only remnants of the dark hordes remain to trouble Middle-Earth, but will Fangorn Forest survive the invasions of...the sheep? Here's what happens when Gimli fulfills his promise to "endure Fangorn" with Legolas. Some humor, some adven
1. Default Chapter

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For this bit of fanfic I've borrowed two characters and a bit of real estate from JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth. I promise to put them back in one piece. (I also promise no Legomance, no slash and no Mary-Sues).

I fell in love with Legolas when Orlando Bloom was still in diapers (I read LOTR first back in 1978, and have since read most of Tolkien's other works), and while Mr. Bloom has given us the definitive Mr. Greenleaf, this tale is rooted more in the book. 

I have named two cats, two horses, a future dog, a truck, a van and two kayak paddles in Elvish. I am however, as linguistically impaired as most Americans. The Elvish (mostly Sindarin) here-in is based as much as possible on the work of The Master Himself (as put forth in LOTR etc,) and on other linguists' interpretations of that work (see appendix). Anything else is covered in the appendix. (Ducks and runs for cover while Serious Linguists load up their plus-five bows of newbie-slaying with two arrows at once.) Serious Linguists are invited to rewrite any and all lines and send them to me for the revised edition. Appropriate credit would of course be given (in the appendix). 

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Teanna

swordwhalewalking illustration: www.geocities.com/makenuk

makenuk@hotmail.com

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"Come! Let us make this bargain-- if we both return safe out of the perils that await us, we will journey for awhile together. You shall visit Fangorn with me, and then I will come with you to see Helm's Deep."

"That would not be the way of return that I should choose," said Gimli. "But I will endure Fangorn, if I have your promise to come back to the caves and share their wonder with me."

"You have my promise," said Legolas. (The Road to Isengard, The Two Towers, LOTR)

~~~~~~~~~Thulesilme's Children~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 1

In a dark dream landscape under a fiery moon, Calad LinsSon hunted orcs. His bow sang, and his count already far exceeded that of his brother, Cam. The wargs that ran with the orcs, or served as hideous terrifying steeds, fell under his sure straight shafts. Their howls split the night...

Cal sat up hard in the dark, the howls had shifted to frenzied, frightened barking, mixed with the terrified screams of goats and the bleating of sheep. He smacked his brother awake and hit the earthen floor running, calling to his older brother, his father, his sister. The thud of feet on the ladder from the loft, the rattle of quivers slung, the hiss of a torch hastily lit in the banked fire, followed them out the door.

"Orcs again!" hissed Cam, searching beyond the torchglow for a target. The herd in the stonewalled barnyard milled and lept in panic, but he could see no orcs.

"There!" A shadow moved among them, two shadows.

Worse than orcs, which were somewhat wary of the sheepdogs. "Wargs!" Cal raced to the stone wall, its uneven surface well over his head. He scrambled up from the gate, teetering on the loose stones at the top of the wall, wishing he knew where to find some decent stone-working Dwarves in this desolate edge of the wild. Wargs, he thought they'd all vanished with the fall of the Dark Lord in the East, but no, like the orcs, they'd scattered, leaping out of the dark wild places when least expected to plague honest settlers. 

The little black and white sheepdogs ran barking to the gate, thrust open by Cam. They stopped, tucked down their ears and tails and retreated. The shadows in the barnyard were beyond their skill. The two brothers fired, over and over, arrows skipping off rock and wall and...

"Watch the sheep!" Cam yelled, already firing from his place on the ground by the gate.

"They've got one down already!" Cal fired again, and again, scrambling along the rough, dark wall, trying to make sense of the melee of pale sheep shadows in torchlight. Trying to pick out the darker shadows between.

The shadows fled, bounding over the wall in a way no dog, no wolf, could.

Cal lept from the wall, Cam ran after him, their sister following with the torch. They marked the path the departing shadows took, and ran hard after them. Near the edge of the wood, one fell under an arrow, then rose and ran again. 

"I hit the other, many times, I'm sure!" Cam panted.

Cal stopped, eyeing the dark wood. His sister halted beside him, the torch whooshing left, then right, as she tried to pierce the deep shadows. Fangorn's wood. There were places in there where the hearts of the trees were dark, and things walked that had never been seen by Men. Things that walked before even the Firstborn awoke. 

"We'll track them tomorrow." Cal said.

Gimli, Gloin's son sat his pony, only slightly less uncomfortable than a badger in a wind-whipped treetop. It was still less terrifying to the sturdy Dwarf than bouncing on the rump of a Rohan warhorse, clinging to the cloak of his friend as he had in battles that seemed a lifetime ago. Legolas rode ahead, drifting like a wolf through the tree-shadow on that same Rohan warhorse, clothes the colors of leaf and bark and stone, winter-grass hair flying like the horse's mane in the wind of their speed. Gimli's earth-colored pony, Sweetgrass, was bigger than the one his father had ridden on the quest to the Lonely Mountain and Smaug's hoard, and smoother of gait. She floated across the ground like a boat on a stream. 

Still he would have preferred to go slower, and on his own two feet. He eyed the sun glinting through the branches, rumbling through his beard in his own tongue that one should never trust an Elf to know when it was time to stop staring dreamily at trees and have a proper meal. Sweetgrass flicked an ear, in agreement, he thought.

Legolas's voice drifted back, speaking Sindarin, like water rolling over river rocks, ending with a laugh. Gimli caught a few familiar words: something-_aes (_food, especially good, juicy meat), _Perrianath (_hobbits), _canthui _(fourth) and something that sounded like breakfast.

"I only had one!" He shouted in Common. "I do not eat like a Hobbit! And my rump has had enough of horsemanship for one morning."

Legolas fell back beside him, slowed, fair face still merry, "You'll make a rider yet." 

"And have me sleeping in trees and talking to rocks. I think not. And the sun tells me it's time for lunch." He drew Sweetgrass to a halt.

Arod, the swift horse of Rohan, stopped, facing him. "There's a change in the air, in the birdsong and tree-whisper." the Elf looked off into the branches, "Storm coming. If we make haste, there's a farmstead but two leagues from here."

Gimli did not bother to ask how he knew. He had probably seen the farm from the hilltop last night, before dark overtook them. Gimli felt no difference in the air, or the indecipherable chattering of birds, but the Elf was usually right in such matters. Gimli had weathered many hard journeys in the wild, but the idea of a roaring fire, a dry roof, and mugs of ale appealed to him more than a soggy night in a tree-shelter. And in this wilderland on the edges of Fangorn, even settlers' cabins were as rare as snake feathers. "Then the faster we ride, the sooner we'll have meat and ale and a warm fire." he thumped Sweetgrass with his heels, flapping his arms and the reins like a vulture trying to take off after too big a meal. The pony raised her head in annoyance and scuttled forward.

Legolas winced, "Keep your hands still..." he began. But Gimli was well down the trail. With but a shift of weight the Elf whirled Arod and cantered after. 

The trail was wide here, and in a few long strides Arod had nearly overtaken the pony. A mischevious flicker came into the Dwarf's deep eyes; this pony had been chosen because she was nearly a match for the swift warhorse. And here, on the twisty trails under the trees, her smaller size and catlike agility were an advantage. He locked one hand onto the saddle pommel and whispered _"Noro lim, noro lim!"_. She flattened her ears and leaped forth like an arrow from the bow.

A few thundering breaths later, the trail looped, snaked back on itself, and dove under some low-hanging pines. Sweetgrass pattered under them, now in a flat-out gallop, about as smooth, it seemed to Gimli, as a boat on whitewater. He clung tighter, held his breath, and shut his eyes.

Behind him Arod's light thunder slowed to an uncertain trot, then stopped. Gimli peeled an eye open, _"Daro, daro!_" he called to Sweetgrass. (He had tried to retrain her in his own tongue, but Legolas had taught her too well in Elvish). She tucked her hindquarters under herself and slid to a stop. He bounced, sloshed, and came to a lurching halt, sprawled across her neck, nose in her left ear. He straightened himself, pulling together as much Dwarvish dignity as he could, peering around quickly.

Arod stood behind him on the trail, riderless. Lego-less.

"Uh." Gimli said. He raised a furry eyebrow. Dropped both of them. Sudden panic took him as he remembered the low branches he'd ridden under so easily. He swore something softly in Khuzdul, directed at the foolishness of certain red-bearded Dwarves; to have ridden through so many battles and perils together, to have faced orcs and wargs and Nazgul and...even the nameless doom of Durin's Bane...and to smash his friend's head on a tree of all things! 

He rode back slowly, afraid to see what lay around the bend.

Nothing. The trail was empty.

Gimli frowned.

A slight squirrel-rustle in the branches overhead, and a light thht! like cat feet; Gimli cranked himself around in the saddle and Legolas stood at his pony's tail.

Gimli let loose then, in his own tongue, waxing eloquent about the lineage and character of his companion-in-arms.

It was more Khuzdul than any Elf had heard since the First Age of Middle Earth. Legolas had learned a few words in the last year, several not repeatable in courtly company. He let it blow over him like a summer storm, sensing the true reason for it. "Your flapping must have helped your pony run faster." he said finally.

"And it seems you learned how to fly into trees." Gimli grumbled.

"I could show you how to do it." he took a light step toward Gimli, straight-faced, but with a glint in his eye like sun on deep water.

"I like my feet on the ground." Gimli slid off Sweetgrass, square and solid as a rock, eyebrows like two bushes over his dark eyes. The Elf might win a race on open ground, or swing into the trees faster, but in a wrestling match, nothing could move a Dwarf who had rooted himself into the earth.

Except perhaps, an Elf who had spent hundreds of years learning how to use an opponent's energy against him. 

Swift as a hunting ferret he moved, and Gimli found himself staring at the tree branches from a vantage point flat on the ground. But his stocky build was no more slow and clumsy than the broad-beamed badger; he rolled and twisted and swept the Elf's feet from under him. "Nobody tosses a Dwarf!" he yelled, and caught a glimpse of a wicked grin growing on the Elf's face. 

Once more, Legolas proved it was possible to toss a Dwarf, or at least remove one from his feet.

But not for long, for Gimli saw much more than he let on, and had made a point of understanding a few things about the elvish martial arts. Like how to dodge those lightning fast grabs, and use his own great strength to good advantage.

...or not. Legolas had the advantage of speed, and years of practice, if not raw strength

The horses backed up, flicked their ears and wandered off in search of grass.

The melee tumbled from one side of the trail to the other with bursts of Khuzdul and Sindarin coming from both sides. As Gimli was executing a lovely forward flip (caused by Legolas' timely duck and block) the Elf was sure he heard the word '_chwand_' at the tail end of a mangled bit of Sindarin. 

"My mother dresses me funny and I look like what...?" he never got to finish because Gimli's heavy boots were now locked around Legolas's neck. 

"_Awartho!" _he demanded, eyes gleaming darkly from beneath bushy brows, grin hidden in his red beard.

_"Awarthon! Awarthon!"_ the words were a bit strangled, but despite a yet vague understanding of Elvish, Gimli understood 'I yield, I yield!'. He rolled to his feet, laughing.

Legolas sat, looking up at him, leaves tangled in his pale hair, face smudged, tunic askew.

"Why did you call me a fungus?"

"I did? I thought I was saying...oh, nevermind."

There was trail food in their packs; waybread and dried fruit, and clear water in their flasks from a spring a few miles back. Not quite ale and red meat, but it would do for now. Overhead the sky went from blue and gold to silver, now even Gimli could feel the wind shift. He cast a worried glance skyward.

"There is still time. It won't rain till nightfall."

"How do you know that?" the Dwarf asked. As long as he had traveled with the Elf, there were yet many things that mystified him, even when they were explained, if they could be explained. _Can you explain how you breathe? Where your thoughts spring from? How you know the sky is blue? What do trees dream of? _

Well, he was a wood-elf anyway, and Elves of any kind were still strange folk.

For some things, Legolas claimed, there were no words. Gimli had found this to be true when he tried to explain the roots of mountains and the beauty of dark deep places, and the bone-solid feel of good rock underfoot. Yet it had mattered not, in their Great Journey from Rivendell to Mordor. It had been their differences; like moon and sun; earth and sky; tree and rock, that made the Fellowship strong. 

Ahead of him Legolas stopped in midstride, like a cat on the hunt, his whole body alert, eyes and ears searching for something.

Gimli felt a prickle of excitement. Long it had been since his axe had hewn anything but firewood. A stray wandering band of orcs a month ago; they had mowed them down like wheat under a farmer's sickle. "What is it?" he hissed. "_Man cennich?"_

The Elf was gone, melted into the trees, Arod danced in a circle on the trail beside Gimli's pony, snorting.

"Whoa there, _daro, daro_, easy, steady boy, _sedho, sedho_." Blast that Elf and his 'I don't need the saddle and bridle' business. There was nothing to hang onto, not that Gimli wanted to try to hang onto the tall horse, if he wished to go elsewhere. Let Legolas call him back if he ran. "Aaaagh!" Gimli looped Sweetgrass's tie-rope around a sapling and stomped off into the woods in the direction Legolas had been looking. "You wouldn't be going to a fight without me now, would you?"

He looked at the ground, not expecting to see any trace of his companion, Elves left no trail, barely even on snow. He peered ahead, nothing but trees and silence. 

Then a sudden crash-crunching of brush, and the faint, sweet sound of a bowstring loosed. 

"I'm coming!" Gimli yelled, smashing through the underbrush with all the grace of a passing orc-horde. He gallumphed out of a small stand of firs to find Legolas kneeling by a body in the ferns. Gimli looked around, axe clenched in gloved hands, then came closer. His eyebrows went up and down a few times, then he stuffed his axe back in his belt.

"Why are you singing to a dead deer?" he asked.

The Elf ignored him for a long moment, then the song, soft as rain shadow, came to an end. He looked up.

"He's a bit beyond hearing you." Gimli added. The buck that lay at the Elf's feet was impressive, and quite dead, one green-feathered arrow had administered an instant, killing blow. 

Legolas made a gesture toward the deer, to Gimli it looked reverant. Then he pulled the arrow, cleaned it and stuck it back in his quiver. "His spirit hears. And Araw the hunter, who taught our people long ago."

"Ah." Gimli plumped down onto a mossy log. These explanations could take awhile; the true name of the Elder Kindred was _Quendi, _the speakers, and they usually lived up to the title. "You told me of him before. One of the Valar. Like Elbereth, the Star-Queen, and Aule the Smith who gave my folk form."

"Yes. We...we sing the song," he said, the words coming uncharacteristically slow, uncertain, like a deer stepping out into a clearing, "...so that they know...the deer..and Araw...that we are grateful for the gift. A life given so we may continue ours." Legolas fell silent, unable to put any more into words.

The Dwarf sat in quiet thought for awhile, letting the words sink in. Like water on stony ground, it took some time, and much ran off.

He finally raised his head and met the Elf's sea-grey eyes. A flicker of understanding passed between them. 

"Well, my friend," Gimli rose and thrust his axe back into his belt, "As always; _curu-cuthalion_. We'll feast tonight!"


	2. Chapter 2

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Chapter 2

Eryn stiffened her back, bringing the dun mountain pony to halt. Glorinn stood, haunches tucked under him, ready to move in any direction, ears flicked back, listening for a word from his rider. She peered through dark hair, like a wild pony's forelock, staring at the smudge in the sky. The two great white dogs a few paces down the trail turned questioning eyes to her. Eryn squinted, wishing for the Elf-sight of her father's companions, but they were long-gone, as was he, and despite the blood of her mother's grandfather, her eyes were the eyes of the children of Men.

She watched the drifting smudge awhile longer, then rode toward it. A mile farther on, the trail wound up out of a wide valley onto a wooded hilltop. Behind her was the fastness of Fangorn, ancient and deep as the sea. Far below she could pick out the thin smoke trails of scattered farms, trees giving way to clearings, the green-misted brown of new fields, the crooked scar of a new road. A black scar where brush had been burned to clear the land. A snow-sprinkle of sheep on a nearby hill. A white blizzard of them on a far hill. One farm she wished to avoid, because a much-needed sheepskin, now rolled at her back, had recently contained a sheep there. 

Well, it had been an old ewe, they would have butchered it soon anyway, and she'd left them most of the meat.

The smudge resolved itself into circling specks, and the hoarse calls of ravens, carried on the wind. With them, on tilted wings, drifted a few vultures, the first to spot carrion in any land. She nudged Glorinn forward, into a brisk trot, then a cautious lope.

She halted by the forest edge, dropped Glorinn's reins, commanding him to stay. With Finlos and Ancalinte stalking at her side like great white bears of the north, she made her way slowly into the trees, following the commotion of the ravens. They shouted at her from the trees, flapping nervously from limb to limb, some landing on the ground, then fleeing back into the safety of the trees again. She looked up, sang soft words to them, words in the old tongue her mother had taught her; "It's all right little brothers, I'm not hunting ravens. You have no wolves here to protect you, so I guess I'll have to do." Farther north and west, she'd heard the songs of wolves under the moon...not wargs, not the spawn of the dark land; _araf_, true wolves. But not for many weeks had she heard them now. They were gone from this settled land, she guessed, like the great bears and the giant eagles she'd only heard of in her mother's songs. 

She crept forward, bow in hand, cautious as one of the great, wise black birds. As she had guessed, something lay dead among the rocks and ferns. She could see three brown feathered arrows sticking up from it. Orcs? Wargs? She'd encountered only scattered bands of orcs...hardly big enough to be called bands...fleeing the Rohirrim and the hunters of Gondor. The orcs had fled from her dogs, or been taken down by her own arrows. And these were not black-feathered, crooked-shafted orcish arrows. 

Eryn stepped silently to the fallen body, no orc, a beast. A deer lost by a bad hunter?

Her gut twisted in her. A dog! Not as tall as her own great drover's dogs, and lean and lithe, more like to the swift hunting dogs of her father. "What idiot would shoot a dog!" she swore things that would have set an orc on its heels, withdrew the arrows from the body. She started to cast them away, then thought better of it, wiping them off on the leaf litter, placing them in her quiver, alongside her own. She marked their design; plain brown goose feathers, clean straight shaft, with one white stripe below the fletching, as a crest. She bent by the dog again, meaning to sing it songs of praise and passing.

She frowned. Men had bred all manner of strange dogs, with legs short or long, skin wrinkled, ears floppy, coats smooth, or hanging in long soft ropes like her own dogs'...but she had never seen a dog like this one. Its tail was long and smooth and nearly bare, and overly broad at the base. Broad stripes danced across its tawny back from shoulder to tail, the great dark eyes stared sightlessly now, and they and the nose and the pricked ears were like every dog she knew. But the mouth was too wide, too long, with too many teeth in the front. The hocks and wrists were too low, more like to a leaping cat than a running dog. And there was no webbing between the toes to hold a running foot together. She cocked her head, some dim memory stirred...a song her mother had taught her, a song out of the dark starlight before the Firstborn awoke. 

She stared at the tail again, and knew suddenly why it seemed out of place on a dog. The tail was like the ones on the little grey tree climbers, the ones with the belly pockets for carrying their young. Swiftly she knelt and rolled the beast over. It was a female, and there was the pocket, and inside, chilled and nearly dead were three pups. She scooped them out, disconnecting them with difficulty from their teats. She wrapped them in her only other shirt, tying it into a kind of sling, and tucked them down inside her tunic. 

"Thulesilme," she said softly to the dead mother, "I will be their mother now." She leaped lightly on the mountain pony. Ancalinte would have pups of her own in a few week, but milk was needed now. Eryn turned the pony's head away from Fangorn, there were two farms she hadn't visited yet.

Grey sky, grey rain, grey twilight, grey horse; the two riders in their grey Elven cloaks nearly invisible against the grey stone wall bordering the farmyard. A new wall, Gimli noted, and low and hastily laid. Not Dwarf-work. The young man leveling his bow at them, rain pouring off his broad brimmed hat, looked nervous. He heard a soft voice, silver as the rain itself, come out of the twilight.

"_Mae govannen, mellon_." 

"Elvish may not be the best choice here." Gimli muttered from under his hood. These settlers were a tough breed, almost as hardy as Dwarves, newly come to this land, and quick to defend it. 

"Hail, friend, well met." Legolas added. The brown-fletched arrow leveled at them lowered a notch. 

"Gimli, Gloin's Son, at your service," the Dwarf dismounted and bowed low, his braided red beard nearly in the water swirling around his heavy boots. "We have a feast here we wish to share," he indicated the deer slung across Arod's withers, "if we can find a dry roof under which to light our fire."

The young man unbent his bow, startled to find one of his mysterious visitors nearly two heads shorter than himself. "Your pardon. We're cautious these days. There are still wandering bands of orcs about, and other stranger things. I am called Cel LinsSon. Come in out of the rain then."

They followed him onto a wide, roofed porch, that wrapped itself comfortably around the log house. Warm light of candles and fire flowed from the windows. Despite the rain, the front shutters were flung open on this cool, late spring night, the broad porch roof keeping all but the windiest weather out of the house. Legolas laid the deer against the log wall of the house, a graceful gesture, as of a gift given.

"My thanks, my brothers will prepare it. Bring your horses to the barnyard."

They followed him across the yard and through a gate just wagon-wide. Gimli noted the same hasty stonework, only higher. His fingers itched for a good stone axe and a string of sunny days. They led the horses in under the broad roof among a motley flock of goats and sheep, and one mule, and through a second gate. "We'll put your horses on this side. Then Gwai and the goats won't steal their supper." Their guide shooed a few goats and the mule to the other side of the small barn, closing the gate behind them. Gimli piled his horse gear in a dry place in the aisle. 

Legolas looked up into the darkness of the barn. Well made timbers so new he could almost hear the trees speak. But trees felled hastily, without the proper songs. He could smell the hay piled in the loft, the grain in the big bin by the back wall. Hear the rustlings of barn cats and small rodents. The soft hiss of a barn owl and the flash of pale wings as it delivered another rodent to its young. That at least was good. 

Their guide threw a couple of forkfuls of hay over to their horses. "That should hold them. The others have had supper already. Now it is time for ours. Come." He led them back across the soggy yard, opened the door and they stepped out of the grey chill into music and warmth and laughter.

A young girl of fourteen or fifteen sat by the fire, playing a wooden flute, firelight dancing in hair the color of a sparrow's wings. A boy of four, hair the same winter-grass color as Legolas's, and a girl, hair the color of a new fawn (nine or ten, Gimli guessed), were doing something with vegetables in a pot, the boy was more interested in making designs with them on his sheepskin. Two older boys, not quite yet men, sat on wolfskins on the floor, working on some arrows, one carefully painting red and blue lines on the shafts to mark them as his. A man and woman of middle age looked up from their tasks at the table, and an old woman looked up from her loom. Sheep and corn, flowers and herbs danced across the wool weaving in warm, earthy colors. Baskets of wool, loose and spun, hung from the ceiling, along with bundles of dried herbs. The travelers shed their soggy cloaks, and their travel-worn leather outer tunics. These were hung by the woman near the fire. 

The two companions laid Gimli's axe and the great grey bow of Galadriel by the woodbox, along with Legolas's knives and quiver, a quiet sign of peaceful intentions. Two knee-high, black and white dogs came and sniffed at Gimli's boots, then at Legolas. They grinned wide doggy grins up at the Elf. Legolas knelt and ran a hand down each back, rubbing in exactly the places he knew dogs loved. A striking sight the two travelers were to this family of settlers on the edge of the wild; the short sturdy Dwarf in his blocky, rough-woven tunic of earthy browns, the tall, pale-haired archer, slender as a young tree, in his undertunic the shifting color of water. Legolas looked up to find Gimli bowing low again, beard brushing the floor, making introductions for both of them.

The eyes in the room were not on the Dwarf, though, but on Legolas. He could feel their curiosity, their uncertainty. And something more; like the feeling of Boromir, when he had halted at the eaves of the Golden Wood, wishing for a fairer, less perilous way, _'though it led through a hedge of swords.' _Or the hard eyes of Eomer of Rohan, when he had first encountered the Three Friends, grey cloaked against the grey grass; _'Have you sprung out of the grass? How did you escape our sight? Are you Elvish folk?' _It was long since any of the Eldar had walked these lands, and it seemed they were already forgotten...or feared. And this time they had no Ranger with them to smooth the way.

The music tootled to a halt. The little blond boy looked up with wide curious eyes. The older boys were silent, judging the strengths, and potential danger, of their strange visitors. The man lowered his dark brows, finding he could not look long into the pale-haired stranger's bright eyes. The girl stood, a slow, wondering smile on her lips, "Nip and Flash do not often take to strangers so well." 

A quiet voice came from the back of the room, "Elf and Dwarf, traveling together? I am glad to have lived to see such a thing!" it was the old woman, smiling behind her loom, "It is long since any Dwarves traveled this way, and I thought all the Fair Folk had gone long ago, over the Sea."

"Not all," growled the Dwarf, "not yet." he gave his friend a long dark stare.

"_Al'hin, mellon_." Legolas said softly. Not while Gimli and the King still lived. Not while there were still wonders to be seen in Middle Earth, though Anduin was near, and he knew one day he would finish the journey he began on her waters, in the grey elf-boats of Lorien, but a heartbeat, but an age ago.

"You must have some tales to tell, Travelers." said the old woman.

"Aye, that we do." said Gimli. One of the brothers made a place for him by the fire. The other vanished into a backroom and returned with a keg. 

"Perhaps not as fine as the ales of your folk, we have heard their legends, but perhaps good enough on a rainy night." The brown-haired young man popped the cork. The other, darker one, brought the largest tankard on the shelf and filled it. The girl laid down her flute and hastened to find another mug. She filled it and brought it to Legolas.

Gimli took a long draught, "Ahhh, as fine as any from the Lonely Mountain!" Whether it really was or not, he didn't care, it was the best he'd tasted in months of travel. The boys grinned, like two young Hobbits he remembered, and missed sorely.

Legolas accepted the mug from the girl with a quiet smile. It was strange stuff, dark and dwarvish, smelling of deep places in the earth and the roots of trees and dark ponds teeming with life. He glanced up to find the girl's wide dark eyes on him. They were full of wonder and something else, like hunger.

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Aniron. It felt strange, and pulled at his heart in ways he did not wish to think about. He glanced away, taking a good swig. It went down his throat in exactly the way Elvish wine didn't. He tried to compose his face and failed. Beside him Gimli snorted, "Elves know good ale like a horse knows good steak."

The boys laughed. 

Legolas finished the mug, face a mask of diplomatic composure.

"That is Eilian, and this is Brethil," the brown-haired boy was pointing to the two girls, "I am Cal...Calad...and this is Cam. Our older brother, Celeg, and young Rhiw." he indicated the Grandmother, "Istil, and his mother, "Lasbelin " and father, "Lin." Eilian hurried to refill Legolas' mug, which he accepted with grace, then slipped quietly to Gimli.

The boys went out to prepare the deer, and the others set the table with the grandest array of food Gimli had seen a since certain Ranger's wedding feast. They sat in the glow of the fire, with the rain soft on the roof, telling their tales of towers and kings, mountains and rivers, wizards and galloping riders and dark places in the earth. Of orcs slain:

"My tale at the end of the battle was forty-one, he bested me by one, but he was the braver. He had to face all of his at arm's length with but an axe."

"Master Legolas would not tell you that half of his were faced with nothing but a knife!"

...and the "unhorsing" of the winged Nazgul: 

"It was a mighty shot by Master Legolas, Beleg Cuthalion himself could not have

bettered it!"

"The bow of Galadriel was a great gift."

Only of the terror of the deepest places of Moria did they not speak.

The fire burned low, and Brethil went to the woodbox. She halted, one hand reaching for a log, then withdrew it. She reached out, ran a finger gently along the silvery-grey carved vines of Legolas's bow. It shifted, and clattered to the floor. She gasped, turned to look, wide-eyed, at the Elf.

All other eyes in the room were on him too. A quiet tension, like the space between thunder and lightning filled the air.

He stood, crossed the room in three silent catlike strides, knelt by Bre. She looked up at him with huge hazel eyes, like a deer who's seen the hunter too late. He lifted the bow and held it out to her, "It will take much more than a little fall to hurt this bow. This is the one given to me by the Lady Galadriel herself. The one that loosed the arrow that slew the Nazgul steed."

"And many orcs." came the deep voice of the Dwarf behind him.

Bre blinked, let out a breath. She took the bow into her hands as it was offered, running her fingers along the fine carvings, along the slender string. "What's this made of?" she asked.

"Elf-hair," he answered.

"Like yours?" she reached out and pulled gently on the long wisp hanging over his shoulder, then fingered the slender braid mingled with it.

He nodded, smiling. "Here." He placed the bow in her hands, and showed her how to lift it, how to hold the string and push the bow into a draw. "Do not let go, unless there is an arrow in it." he warned. She nodded, and drew the bow with all her might, with Legolas' hand placed lightly over hers. It was far taller than she, and she had to turn it somewhat sideways, but she pulled it nearly as far as her nose. "Tomorrow, if your mother allows, we will try it with an arrow." he glanced at Lasbelin.

Bre bounced up and down, like a puppy, "Oooooh, ooooh, can I can I can I can I?"

The woman nodded, watchful tension easing from her face, "If it does not rain."

"I think the sun will raise her head above the clouds in the morning." Legolas said.

Outside the storm pounded against the roof, and Gimli was glad of that roof. The conversation turned to the clearing of woods, the hunting of orcs and wolves and wargs.

"We've had some trouble with wargs and orcs," Lin said. "They've come in the night before and killed or taken sheep and goats."

Cam nodded, "Our bows have been busy. And those of our neighbors. Only two nights ago I tracked two wargs into the woods."

"We hit them with several arrows, but they escaped." Cal said.

"That's how we knew it was no wolf, but some dark leftover spawn of Mordor." said Cam.

"Hsssst! Don't say that name here!"

"It doesn't matter, it's all dust now anyway...except for the orcs and wargs."

Legolas knelt by the fire, noting the wolfskins the boys were sitting on, and another flung over a chest. He reached out, ran long fingers through grey fur. This was no warg.

"The wolves are just as bad." Cal continued.

"Wolves, wargs, it's all the same. But give us a few years and a few more bowmen." 

"Aye. And some Dwarves who can do good stonework." Cal passed another tankard to Gimli.

"Wolves are not wargs." a quiet voice said from near the fire. 

"They all eat sheep. And children!" Cal leaned forward making a ferocious face at Bre.

_They were here before our fathers awoke. They are part of the galadhremmin ennorath_. But Legolas could not find a way to put it into words these folk would understand.

Gimli yawned and took another chunk of venison. He'd seen enough wargs for one lifetime.

Bre made a face at Cal, then went and sat by Legolas. She stared up at him, silent, puppy-eyed. He met her eyes and she didn't look away. He smiled, leaned back and began singing a song about the time before the sun, when the Firstborn awoke and looked up in amazement at the stars, and the wolves sang in the twilight. Rhiw came, and curled up by his feet, then inched his way into Legolas's lap. After awhile, they began trying their small voices in the choruses. Eilian came to sit on the wolfskin chest, eyes never leaving the Elf's fair face. A tankard later, Gimli noticed that Rhiw had fallen asleep in Legolas' arms.

Eryn had seen the boulder field from a distance, a tumbled melee of stone giant toys, like tables and upturned chairs, full of shallow caves and overhanging shelves. A good place to weather a storm.

It seemed Thulesilme's mate had thought so too. Finlos found him tucked far back into a crevice, yawning a great wide threat at them, till Eryn called him and retreated back to where she'd left Ancalinte and the newly aquired (and noisy) milk goat. She huddled around the pack of pups, squirming with new life, thinking how she might help their father. She knew some healing ways, she had stitched up dogs rent by a boar, she had helped birth pups. She could sense the pain and fear of Thulesilme in his den, but she could not speak to him the way her father's Elvish friends could. More than ever she missed them, all of them.

The light through the trees grew, Glorinn twitched his ears, stamping impatiently. There was little to graze here, and no water. They would have to go elsewhere for that.

And perhaps she could at least bring Thulesilme something to eat.


	3. Chapter 3

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Chapter 3

A sudden blast of morning air hit the Dwarf as the quilt was thrown back. "Up Master Groggyhead." Legolas stood over Gimli's borrowed cot, dressed and armed, "Our hosts need your able assistance."

"Uhhhh." his head was on fire, his tongue was glued by some fell force to the roof of his mouth. 

"I think you had far more ale last night than venison." said the Elf.

"I think I would like to sleep longer." but the quilt was gone, and the cot was skillfully upended, leaving him sitting on the chilly stone floor. Outside he heard raised voices, and something about a goat.

Blearily he stumbled into his clothes, his boots, and took up his axe. "What's all the commotion?" It was barely dawn, these country folk got an early start it seemed, even after a full keg of ale. Or two...or three.

"Something came in the night and took our best milch goat." said Cal.

Gimli peered groggily at the small herd of goats and sheep in the barnyard. Only one other seemed to be bearing milk, and there were four kids clustered around it now.

"Wargs." Lin said.

"Wargs, or orcs, would have killed more than they took." Legolas said.

"We could have tracked him, but I think the rain washed away all the prints." Lin said. He nodded toward his three boys, now combing the ground around the barnyard wall. "They have already searched once, but found nothing."

"Master Legolas could track the wind over a field of rocks." said Gimli eyeing the chaotic scramblings of the farmboys.

"And Master Gimli could rebuild all your stone walls in a day, with only his hands, if you bring him another keg of ale." Legolas raised one eyebrow. He leaped onto the barnyard wall, light as one of the little striped cats prowling the verge, studying the muddy ground below. On the far side of the wall, he found what he was looking for, faint traces among the confused prints of the boys, traces of tracks that had been not entirely washed out by the rain. So the thief had come late in the night, when the rain was nearly gone. He should not be too far ahead.

"Go back to bed, Master Groggy," Legolas said, "It is only one foe, and a small one at that. I think I can find him."

"What? And leave me out of a fight? I think not!" He adjusted his axe in his belt, "Hmph, although, I would run better on a full stomach."

Not a full stomach, perhaps, but at least some leftover venison. Gimli would have preferred a real, Hobbit-sized breakfast; first, second and elevensies, but Legolas had come back from a brief sortie along the trail saying, 'Our quarry is light and fleet of foot. If you have your usual breakfast, like a bear going into hibernation, you will move with all the speed of one.'

So now they were scrambling over rocks and fallen logs, through fern and fen and tangly underbrush, following the faint footprints of one goat thief, and the much clearer tracks of a goat moving at a less-than-reluctant speed. That could be accounted for by the two sets of large wolf-like tracks following the goat's. 

Gimli, at least, was scrambling. Open ground, or underground was more to his liking than this tangled old forest edge. Good solid rock underfoot, or a clear, hard road. His short legs were deceptive; he had kept pace with a Ranger and this Elf on the orc hunt which led them for forty leagues and five from Anduin to Rohan in less than four days. Ahead of him now, the Elf ran like a hunting wolf, as if the trees themselves parted to let him pass.

A flow of great grey boulders, moss-frosted, tumbled long ago from the hill above, rose before them. Here and there a few trees had found a foothold, slowly prying the rock apart. Legolas sprang to the top of one great root, Gimli trudging up behind him, "Ah, this is more to my liking." he thumped a hand onto the stone, good hard stone, stone that could be shaped into...

"Our quarry has some skill." Legolas had an odd look on his face, one Gimli was not used to seeing; he looked perplexed. "I would almost think I was tracking..." he looked back down the trail and then out over the rock field, "...one of my own folk."

"Have you lost it then?" the trail he meant. So much for tracking the wind over a field of rocks.

The Elf jumped to another boulder, then another, looking down in the spaces between. He frowned. "I have not lost the trail..."

"Gimli stood, arms folded over his axe head.

"Only..."

Gimli thumped down onto a low rock.

"...mislaid it."

Gimli sat, watching Legolas meander over the rock flow. He yawned, took a swig of cold well water from his flask. Fished in his belt pouch for a bit of leftover venison. He unwrapped the waxed cloth, and started to lift the rather large chunk to his mouth. He paused. "Legolas," 

He sliced the chunk in half and held out the slightly larger half.

The Elf came and sat beside him, staring at the ground. They were silent for some time, chewing thoughtfully.

"Only a Ranger, or an Elf, could lay a trail like that." Legolas said at last.

"Hmmm. Ranger then. You're the only Elf in these parts."

"But that would be a very small Ranger, and what would a Ranger want with a goat?"

"A milk goat. A small one. There were larger goats in the barnyard, if he wanted a feast. And one with that kind of skill could find all the deer he wanted on the forest verge"

"The goat left on its own feet."

"Hmmph."

Silence. Birdsong, tree-rustle. The faint creaking of tree roots splitting rock, that only Elf or Dwarf could hear.

Legolas looked up, was on his feet with the speed of a leaping fox. Then he was gone over the nearest rock.

"What?" Gimli scrambled up after him. Dodged between two great boulders, squeezed through the leaf-littered passage under another. Came crashing to a halt nearly on top of Legolas's kneeling form. The Elf gestured toward the rock at his feet.

"Blood." Gimli said. He frowned at the brownish splotches on the rock; he had learned a few things of late, in the company of the Elf. "Old blood." He gave a satisfied nod.

"How old?"

The Dwarf squinted. Frowned. Frowned harder. 

Somewhere behind and above them, not nearly far enough for his liking, Gimli heard a low noise, not quite like tree roots in rock. He spun like a cornered badger, axe in hand. "Not nearly old enough!" 

Just beyond the reach of his axe, deep in the rock shadow, tumbled boulders blocking its escape, or the escape of Elf and Dwarf, crouched a warg. Its vast, toothy mouth yawned at them, it growled, a chilling sound like an avalanche, far above one in the dark. Gimli let out a startled yell and stepped forward with a mighty swing.

__

"Daro DARO DARO! mellon!" 

Gimli was hauled backwards to land with a heavy thud at the feet of the boulder behind him. Legolas stood between him and the warg now, hands empty of knife or bow. Gimli scrambled to his feet, muttering in Khuzdul, balancing his axe in his hands, considering the possibility that the settlers' ale had a dangerous effect on Elves.

The warg stayed where it was, nearly invisible in the rock-shadow. Gimli could just see something behind it, like a stray tree-root or stick. No. The broken shaft of an arrow in its haunch. He came to Legolas's side, lowered his eyebrows, lifted his axe. The Elf's hand came down on his axe head. "No!"

"What? It's a warg!" 

"That is no warg." Legolas slowly sank into a crouch. The creature remained where it was, the growls subsiding, great dark eyes watching from the shadows. "You and I fought wargs at the feet of the Misty Mountains. You know their shape."

"They can change their shape if they choose."

"They do not walk in the broad light of day. Only under dark cloud, or night sky." 

Gimli studied his friend's face, keen as an elvenblade. He stepped back, folded his hands over his axe, but did not belt it just yet.

The Elf moved forward, singing words soft as sunlight on tawny fur. The creature blinked, and crept forward, into the light.

The Dwarf raised his eyebrows in surprise. "It's a dog! Just a dog, a passing strange one, though Men have bred stranger ones than this." Tawny, like winter grass, with short upright ears like a fox, great dark eyes, and great broad stripes across its back. A handsome beast, now that he looked closely. Lean, short-haired like a hunting hound, with great, huge jaws, and it seemed, far too many teeth. The tail was the oddest part, for it was long and thin and nearly bare of fur, and did not connect straight to the rump, like a spoon in a pudding, but tapered broadly into the rump, the way trees tapered into the ground. He kept his hand on his axe, just in case.

"It is no dog." said Legolas, running his hands gently over the creature, "This is one of Eru's children...from a time before my people awoke, before Aule formed your first kin in the deeps of the earth. Before evil came to Middle Earth."

"You mean, something older than Ents?"

Legolas smiled at the memory, "I think nothing is older than Ents. I have never seen one of these. I thought they were long gone. I know of them only through the songs. Thulesilme, they were called in the old tongue, spirit of the starlight, for they came from that time before the sun, and they love the stars as much as we do."

"This one must have loved sheep as well. Unless I miss my guess, that is the remains of some settler's arrow."

Legolas nodded, smile faded, "They do not understand why someone would build a fence to keep a whole herd of prey just for themselves. Ownership is a word they do not know." he felt along the wound, then along the arrow shaft, bitten neatly through by powerful jaws. The creature stretched out with half-closed eyes, mouth open slightly in pain, but no longer fearful.

"It's a wonder it yet lives."

One of the Elf's lean, strong hands rested on the creature's haunch, the other on its head.

"Probably gone all feverish and pustulent by now." the Dwarf said, fingering the edge of his axe.

Legolas didn't move.

"You mean to do something about it."

Legolas glanced up at his comrade, then back to the creature.

"Even though the sensible course would be to put the thing out of its misery, and leave one less problem for the sheep herders."

Legolas started a low song, barely louder than a heartbeat. Reached for one of the knives on his back. Gently he worked around the wound, loosening the arrow.

"Have you noticed the size of that beast's jaws?"

The song continued, low and steady, like distant surf.

"And what good is it to save one beast? Just one leaf fallen from the tree."

The song faded like a passing nightwind. "Your folk would notice one small jewel taken from a treasure trove. One could ask what good is it to save one Elf, or one Dwarf. Or one Hobbit."

Gimli let out a hard breath, Elves could be more stubborn than Dwarves when they set their sails on a course. "Will athelas work on beasts too?" he asked.

"Yes." 

"I'll make a fire then, and hot water."

They sat by the small, smokeless fire, the thulesilme stretched out beside them like a dog by the hearth. Legolas turned the broken arrow over in his hand. No fletch or heraldry remained to mark its owner, but the wood and the make of the head looked familiar. Or perhaps, all the scattered settlers used the same design. 

Wargs and goat-thieves and a creature out of the stardark. There was no coincidence. All things were connected. There had been two "wargs" in the tale of Cal and Cam. This one was male. And yet the wound looked somewhat older than one the farmboys could have inflicted. Legolas's eyebrows dropped like a stooping falcon's wings.

The songs did not say everything there was to know about thulesilme, for they, like the creature's name, were mostly in the old tongue, in Quenya, and for long, that tongue had been forbidden in the Sindarin kingdoms. He remembered that they did not live in packs, like wolves, but in pairs. 

And there was a thief who wanted a milk goat.

"Perhaps our thief has found pups." Legolas said.

"What?"

"Then where is the mother?" he said half to himself, "The mate to this one."

"What, what?"

"Cal said they escaped into the forest. This one, at least, survived. But where is the other?"

"You think this is one of their 'wargs' ?"

"Perhaps. Or another farmer's." Legolas stood, "I must find her. If our thief has the pups, it seems he will care for them well enough for now. And we have lost his trail."

"What do you mean, _we_?"

"And if he does not have them, then I must find them quickly." The Elf was already slinging his light pack and bow and quiver. 

Gimli stood. "What do you mean _I _?"

"Guard the beast, _mellon_." he did not say he could travel lighter and faster in the woods without the Dwarf.

Gimli eyed the creature with some terror, "Guard it? From what? And who will guard me when it grows hungry!"

"Throw him the rest of our venison. He will not eat you. I told him Dwarves were too tough and stringy." and he was gone into the woods.


	4. Chapter 4

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Chapter 4

The sun and the tree-shadows had barely moved when Legolas found her in the edges of the forest. He'd followed the rumor of the forest, footprints had long been rained out, and heard the raven speech. With a sinking heart he followed the wise birds to the last bits of their banquet. They sat in the trees, chattering to him, mostly young ones who hadn't been allowed too close to the feast until now. A silver-furred form, little bigger than a cat, tiptoed away on pink daisy hands, from a spot among rocks and ferns. Legolas did not remember its name, but he marked the slender bare tail, clever and grippy, like a fifth hand, and the long whiskery nose, the bright eyes, the flower-petal ears. Tree-climbers and carrion eaters they were, and odd; they carried their young in pouches on their bellies, or so a traveler had told him, he had never stopped one to look. He slipped up to the place the silver-furred climber had left. Little was left but bones, not even the smell remained, but the teeth and the tail were that of thulesilme. He knelt for a time, silent, he knew no songs of passing for this creature out of time. 

Far away, thin and faint, came a mournful wailing. Gulls, come up the river, circling over the farm fields. The familiar ache stirred in his heart. He thought of the many new clearings he'd seen in the last month. The tree-groves burned to clear them the faster. Ancient forest giants felled for cabins. The lack of wolf-song under the moon. These new folk had not learned from the Eldar, they did not understand _gaea galadhremmin ennorath. _The old world was passing, things were changing, too fast for Thulesilme. Too fast for the Sindar.

He finally stood, considering what he must do now. There were no arrows among the bones. Either she had pulled them out herself (unlikely, they would be broken, as her mate's was), or... He moved out from the bones in circles, searching the ground. Less rain had come here, and there were places more protected that yet harbored tracks.

"Ahh." small, soft-soled boots, and the great wolf-like tracks he'd seen before. He had thought to backtrack Thulesilme to her den, to find the pups. But his heart was telling him, as it had from the beginning, that even if he found the den the pups would be gone.

He needed to find his goat-thief.

'Don't stare into their eyes, for that is a challenge.' Gimli sat, trying not to stare at 'Silme', arms folded over his axe head, trying to remember all the other bits of advice his friend had given him regarding the elvish way with all good beasts. So far, Silme was ignoring him, prefering to work on the rest of the venison from his and Legolas's packs. Gimli eyed the mighty jaws with special interest. It looked as if not even Dwarf mail would be proof against them.

The sun walked her slow path across the sky, the tree-shadows wheeled over the rocks. The fire died. Gimli did not move to replenish it, afraid of disturbing Silme, now sleeping.

Suddenly the beast was on his feet, growling low, wobbling a bit on his injured haunch, dark eyes measuring the potential power of the Dwarf's axe. Or so it seemed. No, the eyes were not fixed on Gloin's son, but past him.

Gimli turned to find the second arrow in two days pointed at his heart. He had come to admire his friend's skill with the bow, it had saved both their skins many times. But he much prefered an opponent doughty enough to face him at axe-length. Facing him now from the top of a rock was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, grey eyes peering through a wild horse mane of dark hair. Two great white beasts flanked him. For a moment Gimli thought they were sheep, or mountain goats, or great white bears...then he realized they were some sort of enormous, ropey haired dog, like the sort the drovers of Dale used to move cattle and sheep to market. He stood, placing himself between the boy and Silme (thus turning his back on the dreaded great jaws), turning his axe broadside out. A small shield, but it had turned arrows before. "Hold young master!"

"What are you doing with Thulesilme, Dwarf?" it was said in a way that suggested a deep suspicion of his kind, and the voice was no young man's.

"I am guarding the beast till my friend returns. How do you know its name?"

The leveled arrow sank half a hand's width, dark eyebrows knotted. 

"If you are tracking him to repay him for the theft of your sheep, you'll have to discuss it with me first." the Dwarf said, rooting his feet into the ground.

The arrow drooped further, the expression on the young face looked perplexed. "He has stolen sheep from you? I didn't know Dwarves kept sheep."

"We do not." 

The girl's grey eyes scanned the camp, the wounded creature, the Dwarf's face. She leaped lightly to a nearer rock. Gimli noted an odd lumpiness to her tunic front. 

"Why does your shirt move? And how do you know the beast's name?"

"My mother sang it to me, in the old songs." The bow remained half-drawn.

"Then you do not wish to kill him?"

The bowstring tightened a bit. "What do you wish to do with him?"

"I wish to find him more venison before he decides that a Dwarf would make a good afternoon tea. My friend has gone to try to find his mate. It was he who drew the arrow from this one's haunch." Gimli frowned at the well-made shaft aimed, now, somewhere near his knees. Not much like the one Legolas had pulled from Thulesilme's haunch. "I guess it was not your arrow after all."

"No. Nor yours, for you have only an axe. So, no doubt does your friend, I've never seen a Dwarf who could wield a bow well." she inched closer, peering into the rockshadow where Thulesilme had retreated, then frowned at Gimli, "What do you mean he pulled the arrow from this one's haunch? How? I could not get near the beast!" 

"I have traveled under mountains and through great darkness with him, and I still do not understand it." The Dwarf let out a breath, gave a brief, cautious bow, "I am Gimli, son of Gloin, of the Lonely Mountain. As I said, I am guarding Thulesilme, till my friend returns. It seems we have the same purpose." He turned and sat back on his rock. "You may come and share our camp, though all our rations have been fed to Silme."

The girl made a sharp sign toward the two great dogs, they vanished behind a boulder. Thulesilme stared out from his rock crevice, silent. "I am Eryn." was all she said, unslinging a light pack, and two fat rabbits therein. She lay them as near Thulesilme as she could get, then sat on a rock facing Gimli.

"Eryn. _Eryn Lasgalen_ was the name of the Greenwood the Great, before the dark things came, and folk called it Mirkwood."

She looked up startled, "I was named for that wood. How does a Dwarf know such things?"

"My father was lost in its depths once, a long tale, full of stone trolls, goblins, giant spiders and dragon's gold. My friend is from that kingdom, the Wood of the Green Leaves. And now, that the Dark has fallen from power, they are green once more." He eyed the odd movement in her shirt-front.

Eryn crossed her arms protectively over it. "The only folk who live in Mirkwood are woodsmen and woodelves."

"My friend is one of the Sindar."

"Hah!" she glared at him from under her tangled mane, "maybe you lie about what you plan to do with Thulesilme too." her grey eyes had the look of sky before a storm.

It was one thing to threaten him with arrows and sudden death, but to say he told less than the truth was to ignite a deep, fierce fire. He glared at her, eyes gone dark as mine-shadow. Elves would sit all day and discuss such things, but Dwarves would take action.

She stood suddenly, arms clenched around her shirt-front, glaring defiantly out of a face somehow young and old at once. It reminded him of Legolas, although this one was surely one of the Edain, the Children of Men. One who had seen much in her short years, he thought. The deep fire in his heart mellowed, burned itself out. One thing he had learned in his long travels with the Fellowship, was not to act in haste.

"Sit child."

"I am no child."

"So you are not. We both wish to help the beast. And I do not tell less than the truth. Maybe you should tell me what burden you carry there."

She was silent, watching the striped beast in the shadow of the rock. From somewhere at the edge of the rockfield Gimli heard the faint bleating of a goat. He turned his head toward the sound, and the girl noted it.

Gimli smiled, "So you are indeed our goat-thief! I can guess the burden you carry; Thulesilme's children."

She looked at him with wide, startled eyes. Rose again, as if to flee.

"Nay, nay girl. Stay. It is as Legolas thought, the goat was taken for its milk. But how did you find the den?"

"There is no den. They carry their young with them, at least, when they are this young."

"I suppose they have backpacks, like my folk on a long journey?"

"Yes. In a way. They have pouches, on their bellies. The females, anyway. The pups stay there till they are old enough to follow on their own feet."

"That's a stranger tale than an Elf traveling with a Dwarf."

"Well maybe they are both true then." She reached into her tunic and pulled out a cloth sling, wriggling in the way a nest of puppies does. She withdrew one, and unslung the flask at her waist. A moment later the handful of tawny fur was busier at the bottle than a Dwarf at a good keg of ale. "Your goat-thief, you said. Then you are friends of the settlers?"

"We shared their roof last night, and they are good people. We thought to repay their kindness by finding their lost livestock."

"I have need of her."

"I see."

"You will have to get past my guardians, and me."

"And a fierce battle it would be, I have no doubt." the Dwarf stirred the fire, adding some wood, fished in the camp supplies for the last bit of venison. He eyed the fat rabbits, now being gnawed by Thulesilme, sighed and cut the venison in two. He held out a piece to the girl. 

She answered with a curt nod of thanks and continued to feed the pups in silence.

Hours passed with only the light wind in the trees and the sounds of birds preparing for twilight. Eryn rose once to check on her animals, and returned without a word to sit on a rock near Silme's den. He inched forth, raising his nose towards her, sniffing, but kept his distance. Gimli had questions about a young girl in such travel-worn clothes (like a certain Ranger he remembered), but his folk were not inclined to pry. If she wished to talk, she would. 

She didn't.

The sun slanted orange through the trees, late day dappled light playing tricks on Eryn's eyes. She had caught herself dozing half a dozen times, standing suddenly to shake off sleep. She'd had little last night, and did not entirely trust sleep in this Dwarf camp. Nor would she leave Thulesilme totally in the Dwarf's care. She took a swig from her water flask, a handful of dried fruit from her dwindling belt pouch.

A bit of tree-shadow detached itself and became a man. A young man dressed in tree-colors, like her father and his companions had worn, moving silently as they had, and carrying a bow. A fair dream from the past. She blinked, realized she was quite awake. Her hand went to her bow, she glanced at the Dwarf. He dozed where he sat. She stood, feet braced, between the stranger and Thulesilme, bow raised. He did not quite look like one of the settlers, but she was taking no chance. She met his eyes with a hard, silent challenge.

It was like looking at sunlight on the surface of deep water. Memories moved in Eryn's heart like the half seen flash of a fish in the depths; a tall man with the same sea-grey eyes and dark hair showing a four-year old girl how to draw a bow, how to hear the whispers of tree-talk.

__

"Sedho thalien, nuitho i 'ruith." the young man said softly.

Not a Man, not one of the Edain.

_Eldar_. An Elf. The words were familiar to her, she had learned them before the Common tongue, and he knew that she knew them the way her long-ago teacher knew when she was stretching the truth. She returned her arrow to the quiver, lowered the bow. She bowed, keeping her eyes fixed on him. _Be still, valiant lady_, he had said, _hold your wrath_. His face had a trace of a gentle smile. He came down to the fire, glanced under the overhang at Thulesilme, then poked the Dwarf in the shoulder.

"Wake up, fox-ears_." _he unslung his gear along with a fat bundle of rabbits. Two of them he took to Thulesilme. He knelt, laying them before the beast with something like reverance. He rose, turned to Eryn. "_Havo-dad_." he said, gesturing toward the rocks and log by the fire, as if they were carved and cushioned seats in a meade hall.

She sat by the fire, eyes wide. So the Dwarf had told the truth. "Are you Legolas?" she asked, then blushed at his nodded answer, for the stranger should declare herself first, and this was their camp. "I am Eryn." she blurted.

Gimli started, harumphed, and straightened in his seat.

"I see you've caught our goat thief, and are guarding her well." the Elf said.

"And very soon the chief guard had no keys." Gimli snorted.

Eryn, confused, looked from one to the other. The two locked eyes, but both faces had growing looks of amusement on them.

"He refers to the incident with the dragon." Legolas said, "The time thirteen Dwarves and one Hobbit crashed my father's party in Mirkwood, but would not say why they were there. They wound up our 'guests' for some time."

"If you can call a dungeon a guest room."

"Dungeons? Dungeons?" on his fair elvish face there was a look of mock distress.

"Dungeons and dragons and too much Elvish wine for the guards." Gimli said, " And a ring of invisibility. And some very tight fitting wine barrels out the trapdoor and into the river and a clever Hobbit. So my father tells the tale. I was not there." 

"Then how did you come to be traveling together?" Eryn asked. "The Elves my father knew did not...did not travel with Dwarves."

"We met much later, over the same magic ring. It is a long tale, full of orcs and Dark Lords, and nearly the end of the world; you may hear it if you wish, though Thulesilme's children would be hunting on their own by then." Gimli said.

"So you have found the pups?" Legolas said.

Eryn drew forth the cloth pouch with the wriggling horde of three, held them out to the Elf. He took them in his fine-chiseled hands, like eggs that might break. 

"_Elo!"_ he breathed, "How did you find the den?"

Gimli sat back, quickly burying a knowing smile. Legolas glanced at him, cocked an eyebrow. "There is no den_ beleg angol cherdir erynist."_

Eryn saw Legolas raise the other hawk-wing eyebrow. She understood the Dwarf's slightly mangled Elvish to mean mighty-wisemaster-keeper-of-all-woods-knowledge. His face was perfectly straight now, under his beard, but his eyebrows were twitching like two crazed ferrets. Eryn broke into a grin. 

"I suppose they carry their young about in great backpacks, like Dwarves on a day trip." the Elf said.

"Yes!" Eryn laughed.

Legolas looked puzzled. He handed the pups gently back to Eryn.

Gimli was bent double, trying to contain a laugh far too large for him to wrestle.

"I said, yes, they do carry them. Not exactly in backpacks. In belly packs. They have pouches in their belly skin." Eryn said. She withdrew one of the pups, turned it upside down and showed Legolas the pouch on the tiny female.

"_Ai! _What a strange thing. I don't remember that from any of the songs I heard."

"And yet your songs told of the Onodrim, the Ents," Gimli said, "but you had never seen one before we came to Isengard. Nor knew that they yet walked the forests of Fangorn."

__

"Na belegaer a gilith!" By the Great Sea and stars! "Indeed, many of the songs have been lost._" _he turned to Eryn, "How did your mother learn these tales?"

Something like cloud shadow passed over her face, "From her father, he was of the Avari. Though where he went after my grandmother died, we do not know. _Urentin nallant nirnaeth arnoded."_

His heart wept tears unnumbered. Legolas's smile faded. He thought of the eight friends he had traveled with, fought beside, and their short years (save only Mithrandir the Istar). But to marry one of the Edain...he knew well one who had made that choice, and why.

"My father was of the Dunedain." Eryn continued.

"Dark Elves and Rangers." Gimli said. "So that's how you learned to leave no trail."

She nodded. "And my father learned much from the Elves he traveled with, before he met my mother. He traveled somewhat after, and at first his old friends would come to call. I learned their tongue, and a few of their skills, but I was very young. And soon their paths split from ours."

"My father didn't think he should be so far and so long from home, so they built a house in the woods south of Sir Ninglor, between Anduin and Hithaeglir."

"Not far from the Gates of Khazad-Dum!" said Gimli.

"Or the darkness of Dol Guldur." said Legolas. Dol Guldur, the dark tower that plagued the Greenwood till it became Mirkwood.

"Yes. We weathered that darkness until it was broken. I thought all would be _laur inath arnediad bin revail gelaidh _like the old saying..." her voice faltered and stopped, she stared hard into the tiny fire.

"Golden years without count like the wings of trees." said Gimli softly. "Where are your kin?"

Legolas knelt beside her, "They are gone."

She cleared her throat. "When I was small, I liked to pretend I was hunting orcs. Fighting the Dark. I went one day...not long ago...to hunt. I had the dogs...and my pony and my bow and supplies for a day trip. When I returned, all was dead, burned or taken." She curled around the three pups, face hardened. She would not cry before these two experienced warriors.

She felt a warm, gentle arm encircle her, like a memory from a childhood so long gone she was not sure it had ever been. She leaned into the soft rough leather of the tree-colored tunic, felt elf-hair brush her face like a summer breeze.

The _nirnaeth arnoded _, the tears unnumbered, broke their long-held dam at last.


	5. Chapter 5

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Chapter 5

"What will we do with her?"

Legolas lay wrapped in his grey Lorien cloak, open eyes focused not on the stars flickering through the tree-branches, but on deep inner dreams.

"Maybe I should learn to sleep with my eyes open, then there would be no need to set watches, the orcs would run from the sight." Gimli sat by the fire. Eryn slept on her stolen sheepskin, curled around the bundle of pups a few feet from Legolas. Finlos and Ancalinte, were pale snowdrifts just out of reach of the firelight. Thulesilme lay in his den, gleaming eyes watching the dogs.

"Indeed. A Dwarf snoring with his eyes open would terrify even a Nazgul."

"Hmmph! I thought you were asleep."

Legolas sat up. "I was." He looked at the girl. "What did you say?"

"That I think Lin could use another daughter." the Dwarf said with an air of finality.

A line of Elvish flowed forth like a mountain stream.

"I do not have a head full of weasels!" Gimli glared out from under his eyebrows. "And I think that Elves are just jealous that they cannot grow such magnificent beards." He tugged thoughtfully on his forebraids.

"I think I hear the chirping of new hatchlings. Have you combed that lately?"

"Hehh!" Gimli reached for a bit of leftover rabbit. He rose, found another small log, set it on the fire, careful to do it quietly. He cast a glance at the girl, still sleeping.

Legolas saw the look in his eyes, gentle under the gruffness, almost fatherly. He half smiled.

Gimli looked up, his face as set and solid as rock. "It's the sensible thing to do, my friend. She can't wander about the wilderness forever. Her family is gone. Her kin are scattered, she has no idea where they are, _if_ they survived the War of the Ring." He saw the look on his friend's face, like a shadow of the sea-longing; the sad, distant look he got when he heard gulls. "Have you a better idea?"

__

"Olonnen." I was dreaming on it. "She would not stay with the settlers."

"Take her back to Minas Tirith then, there are yet Rangers there. Perhaps some who know a second cousin twice removed on her father's side. Or something."

"_Urentin cuia eryn."_ Her heart lives in the woods. "I wonder where her grandfather's folk are?"

"Gone to the Uttermost West, no doubt."

"The Avari refused the Call long ago. They belong to Middle Earth. They seldom get the sea-longing."

"Then they're still here, somewhere? Where?"

"That tale hasn't been sung down through the generations." Legolas stared unblinking into the fire. He missed the wisdom of Ranger and Wizard. Even the earthy common sense of one small Hobbit gardener would be useful now.

"Then she has only a stubborn Elf to care for her." Gimli said.

"And a rock-headed Dwarf."

"Ehh." the rock-headed Dwarf was silent for a moment. "There is also the matter of the goat."

"She needs the goat."

"You cannot simply take someone's livestock without compensation. And it's going to be very difficult explaining to Lin's family how we are using it to raise more "wargs" to eat more of his sheep. Unless you can convince them to prefer leaves and grass."

"They are what they are. Predators. They belong to this forest. They're part of its..._gaer galadhremmin ennorath_." There were simply no words in the common tongue to explain the concept of how all things were part of the great world tree, a complex tapestry where one pulled thread could unravel all. He thought of the new farms, the clouds of sheep, like the forefront of a storm, sweeping over the grass. The burned clearings, new timbers, trees felled without song. Fangorn and his kin would guard the heart of the forest for a few ages more perhaps, but on the marches of this oldest of all forests of Middle-earth Legolas could see the threads were beginning to come loose. 

"When Thulesilme is well again, he'll just go down there and eat more sheep. Unless we take him somewhere else." Gimli said.

"We might. But it would not solve the problem forever, if indeed, he did eat the sheep. There would one day be more sheep farmers, and less forest. And there are the pups."

"All four of them." muttered Gimli.

"If you are going to discuss my fate, you might ask what I thought of the matter!"

Elf and Dwarf turned in surprise to find Eryn glaring at them from under her wild pony mane. 

"Some people sleep with their eyes open, I learned to stay awake with mine shut."

Elf and Dwarf exchanged glances. "_Aa_." Legolas said, "And what would be your choice in the matter?"

She stood, making herself tall. "Not to stay in some settlers' cabin, baking bread and pounding clothes on river rocks."

"Then where would you go?"

"Where I always have. Into the wild. You have no need to be concerned about me."

"Well we are anyway." Gimli said.

Legolas still had a hard time reading the Dwarf's face, so thoroughly covered as it was with hair, but he thought he saw something softer than the usual badgerish stolidness there. "_Man pida gurdh?_" he asked the girl.

What says your heart? She looked from one to the other, searching the mine-deep eyes of the dwarf, the sea-grey eyes of the elf. "I can sleep on the ground, I'm handy with a bow. I can skin a rabbit, find athelas and other herbs, track a deer, know which mushrooms are safe to eat, and how to care for horses and dogs and..." She paused for breath, trying to read their faces, suddenly unsure of herself. Then the words tumbled out, like puppies from a den

"Take me with you."

Legolas gave her the startled look of a fox who has had a cub pounce on his tail.

"There's much you could show me. How many trees have you seen grow from acorn to ancient giant? How did you get Thulesilme to let you take care of him? How did you find the female, after all the rain? How can you dream with your eyes open? What do trees whisper about? How...

"_Ai ai! _" he raised a hand, motioning her into silence.

Gimli said, "It wouldn't be proper for a young lady to travel with..."

"I'm no lady." she frowned then, not sure that had come out right.

"Heh." Gimli said, "Perhaps not. No lady would try to turn me into a hedgehog with her arrows, or take a goat without proper payment." He eyed the sheepskin, "And your bedroll does not look like something that was found wandering in the woods."

This Dwarf-face, Legolas could read, it was the kind of face he'd seen on his own father's many a time, when he had not entirely lived up to the King's expectations.

"First," Gimli said, "you need to repay Lin for his goat. Then we will discuss your travel arrangements." His eyebrows sat over his dark eyes like badgers defending their burrows.

"I have no money."

"Then you need to think of another way."

"There is no other way."

"There is always a way, even if one must hack through the side of a mountain and forty-two orcs."

"I need the goat."

"So do they."

"They have many goats, and one other for milk. That one will care for the young of this one. And there are more to come. I saw two who were large with young."

"That's not the point."

Legolas's eyes went from one to the other; more and more this looked familiar. Like the discussion of his father and sister; when she had ridden out over the mountains, without his knowing, losing horse and baggage and nearly her life.

Eryn glared at the Dwarf, turned and sat by the fire again. She reached into her quiver and pulled out a handful of brown-fletched arrows. They were all of the same make; the same brown goose feathers, the same workmanship, only the bands of color under the feathers were different. She laid down three arrows, banded with white, "These I found in the mother of the pups." A half dozen more, banded with red and blue, "These I found at the edge of the forest, near the farm where I got the goat." She looked at Legolas, "Made by the same fletcher, don't you think?"

"Likely."

"I think a goat is not nearly enough payment for the life of Thulesilme." She glared at Gimli again.

"They were defending their herds." Gimli said.

"They don't belong here, in the edge of the wild, with their sheep and their cabbages and corn. They don't know anything about the forest. About _galadhremmin ennorath_."

Legolas leaned forward, picked up the red and blue-banded arrows. "What creature were these in?"

"None. They lay in the leaf litter by the forest edge. My dogs found them, growling and snarling at them, as if..." she frowned, "But they are the same as the others, and they must have come from that farm."

"The red and blue ones are Cal and Cam's. And the others seem to be made by them, but they did not use the white crest." he looked up at Eryn, "You have dealt with orcs before. What do you know about wargs?"

"Only the stories. Evil spirits wearing wolf shape. I think some followed us once, but Finlos and Ancalinte kept them away. Barely. I saw their eyes glowing from beyond the firelight, they did not act like real wolves. And the dogs growled and snarled all night. If their hair could have stood up, it would have stuck out like a Dwarf's beard in a gale."

"You never shot any?"

"No. Well, yes, but I missed." she looked a bit embarrassed, "I found my arrows the next morning."

"We fought wargs at the feet of the Misty Mountains once. In the morning, only my spent arrows remained." Legolas said.

"You can't kill them?"

"Yes, you can, but they vanish with the sun. The forms their spirits wear are destroyed by the light."

Eryn picked up the red and blue arrows again.

"Cal's tale of two wargs was true, then." Gimli said. "But Thulesilme and his mate must have tried to eat some other farmer's sheep. One who traded for his arrows with Cal or Cam."

"More likely a stupid settler in the woods who could not tell a dog from a deer." Eryn snapped.

Legolas laid the broken shaft from the male alongside Eryn's arrows. They were the same.

"Perhaps someone shot them thinking they saw wargs." Gimli added.

"They do not need to think they see wargs." Eryn said. "They'll kill anything that looks like it might be dangerous, that they do not understand. Would that I could find the one who belonged to this." she picked up one white-striped arrow, eyes as dark as storm clouds.

"What would you do?" Legolas said softly, "Drive off their herds? Burn them out? Kill them in turn?"

She met his eyes and looked quickly away. She stared into the fire for many long heartbeats. Finally she looked up at him, "Well what would you do? You're an Elf of the Wood. Have you not seen what they're doing to this land?"

_Ai_. He met her grey eyes, then looked away into the fire himself. He had thought no farther than healing Thulesilme and finding the goat thief, and the pups. Seeing them raised, perhaps, and set free where they belonged. Seeing the rest of this great forest, and other places, before he followed the Call and left Middle-earth forever. Bringing some of his folk out of the Greenwood to tarry in the fair province of Ithilien for awhile before they too, answered the call. 

When he spoke, his voice was barely louder than leaf-whisper. "I have fought my battles. It's not my world anymore. It is yours. "_Man agorthadh?"_

What will you do? 


	6. Chapter 6

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Chapter 6

"The dawn is here _aew_," Legolas shook Eryn's shoulder gently.

She sat up with a start, noted Gimli still snoring on the other side of the fire. She squinted up at Legolas.

"Bring your bow, we have a family to feed."

She followed him over the rock field, past mossy trunks wider than she was tall, to where her dogs lay, patiently guarding her flock of one pony and goat. The two hoofed ones had wandered in the night, the goat browsing on shrubby things in the low inderstory of the forest, the pony finding some grazing among the great roots and rocks. The dogs had stayed with them, keeping away anything with teeth and claws and an empty belly. She took a few moments to milk the goat, and feed Thulesilme's children. And change the dry moss and grasses in the pouch. Their mother would have licked them clean, but for now, a cloth dipped in her last bit of water would do. While she did this, the Elf took the pups in his hands, warming them, singing softly to them of their place in the _gladhremmin ennorath_. 

Eryn finished with the pouch, Legolas handed the pups back, and she tucked them into place. He unwrapped a bit of last night's leftovers and handed it to her, and got some for himself. The rest he left for Gimli.

"I'll have to take the animals down to the stream first, for water." Eryn said to him. She pointed away down the trail.

"There is a closer one._ Tolo_." Come.

She looped her lead rope onto the pony's halter, called the dogs and followed Legolas into the woods, the goat trotting before the dogs as she had on the way into the forest. She and the pony and dogs had moved through many woods like this one, Eryn, at least, could do it nearly as quietly as the Elf. The goat scrambled behind with an occassional "maaaa" of distress, afraid of the shadows and strange smells and mysterious rustlings in the brush. 

The goat made nearly as much noise as a certain Dwarf, Legolas thought.

They came at last on a spring flowing out of a steep rock face. It trickled down among lichen-splotched rocks into a small, clear pool. Legolas saw Eryn leave the animals a few yards away, pace around the pool, searching the ground, before she brought them in to drink. "What did you see?" he asked.

"No tracks." she looked up at him, "Well, you might not leave any, but Gimli would. How did you know about this pool?"

"By the song and dance of the birds and the rumour of the trees." 

She frowned, "Explain."

"It does not fit into words."

"Well, then how did you learn it?"

"Following my _Cherdir." _he gave her a cool, questioning look.

"What?"

"Teachers." his eyebrows dropped, not quite right, "Master, one who shows the way. It is not the same word in your tongue."

"Oh." 

He knelt and filled his waterskins, silent. 

Eryn filled hers, stood, eyed the Elf, fidgeting. "Well, can you show me anyway?"

He remained silent.

She paced in a circle, readjusted the pups in the pouch, eyed the growing light in the tree branches. Frowned at Legolas. The dogs yawned and flumped onto the ground, tongues hanging. Eryn stood beside them.

Legolas laid his waterskins by his bow and quiver, and folded himself onto a rock by the pool. "_Tolo_." he touched the space beside him with his fingertips, "_Havo-dad_."

Eryn came and sat beside him, pups and all.

"First, you must learn to be still." he turned his eyes to the tree in front of him, seeing it but not seeing it, focused on a distant memory, a faraway time when he was smaller than Eryn, and even shorter in years, when the world was a new place full of unexplored wonders. He still knew the songs that had been sung to him then, even though he had not heard them, or sung them in many lifetimes of the tree before him. He sang one of those songs now, soft and low as the trickle of water on the rockface behind them, and in it were the roots of understanding how tree and rock and water and bird connected. He knew many of the words were strange to Eryn, but it mattered not. The song went beyond the understanding of mere words.

He felt, more than saw, Eryn shift on the rock beside him. Scratch an itch. Eye a passing bug. Glance at the dogs. Readjust the pup-pouch. 

He kept singing.

Gradually she grew still, studying the bark of the tree before them. Then, for a moment, she saw through it, beyond it...saw the whole circle.

He felt it. Smiled. The song ended, he flowed to his feet, held out a hand. 

She opened her mouth, trying to think of words to describe what she'd felt. 

"There are no words." Legolas said. He looked into the girl's eyes, the way the Lady Galadriel had once looked into his, though he did not have her depth of vision. Eryn met his gaze levelly, unflinching as a hawk. He saw there the wildness of a rocky river, the restless moon-changes of a young wolf, but strength too, if it could be directed. And (it surprised him) he saw the same look in her eyes that the dark eyes of Gimli Lock Bearer, bore for Galadriel.

Ai, I did not ask for this. But he could no more leave her here, in the woods or with strange folk, than she could leave Thulesilme's children. In her flowed the blood of Avari and Rangers, and through them, the Maiar and Sindar. She was a relative. Even without that, she was kelvar_, _as he was. Kelvar, the creatures of Middle-earth and olvar, the green things, and all else were related. He picked up his gear, slung it over his back. "Let us go." he said to her, glancing at the slant of the sun through the high branches. The morning was getting old.

Gimli looked up from the stick he was carving; it was as long as his forearm and half as thick and the pattern he was working into it had reached more than halfway to the end. He had heard the crunch of brush and snort of the pony, not the light step of the Elf rolling a deer off his shoulders onto a rock. 

"And where is the young lady?"

"Looking for mushrooms and roots." Legolas raised an eyebrow, "Someone taught her well how to use a bow. This deer is hers."

"Hmmmp. Perhaps we _should_ leave her here. It would be easier than trying to change her mind."

"She _is_ nearly as thick-headed as a Dwarf."

"And as incomprehensible as an Elf." Gimli set down his carving and knelt near Legolas, already begining carve up the deer. He eyed the pony, browsing on the edge of the rock field. "Would it not be easier to carry it to Lin whole?"

"It is not for them."

Gimli's eyebrows twitched questioningly. "I thought perhaps Eryn had found a way to pay for the goat. Though with with milk and young, it would take more than one deer..."

"_Hu-lin_." Legolas nodded toward Thulesilme, and Finlos guarding the pony and the goat. "We have a lot of dogs."

"That should hold them for a few hours." Gimli said wryly.

They worked in silence for awhile, in harmony, each doing what the other wasn't, each where the other wasn't. 

"It's getting late." Gimli said at last. "And there is still a long walk back to Lin's. Where my pony is no doubt enjoying a fine meal, and a long rest. A long hard walk back to Lin's, with no pony."

Legolas broke into a smile, "Would that Eomer could hear that. _'I would sooner walk than sit on the back of any beast so great'..._is that not what you told him when we were given horses by the Rohirrim?"

"Eh."

"_Agorthath rochben_." You'll make a rider yet.

Gimli glowered, "It would yet take more than elf-years to make a Rider of me."

Legolas smiled, and carried a large piece of venison to Thulesilme, setting it down just outside his den. 

Thulesilme eased out, cautiously, then opened his great jaws and began wolfing down his meal.

"Have you talked sense into her?" Gimli asked.

"You mean, have I convinced her to return the goat and trade a free life in the wild woods for pounding clothes on river rocks? No."

"Ehhhhh, she will have a different song to sing when winter comes."

"She must write the end of her own story."

"Hmmmp. We could return the goat ourselves, and that would be the end of it."

"Then Thulesilme's children would surely die. Give her time to think on it."

"Time? Time! That's all very well and good for Elves, for you, time has no meaning."

"If you approach the blackbird too eagerly it flies away."

"The girl must take responsibility." Gimli grumbled.

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter."

"One more indecipherable Elvish proverb and you're going to wake up with a new haircut tomorrow."

"I seem to remember that the _lirien l_eaves we collected for medicine also make a wonderful brilliant blue dye..."

Gimli eyed him from under bushy red brows.

"...doesn't come off the skin for weeks." 

They locked eyes; earth-brown, immoveable as mountains, and storm-grey crackling with lightning. Then the grey shifted to amused silver, and Gimli broke into a laugh, imagining Legolas with the short, straight hair of the farmers, like a shorn sheep, and himself all blue like the wild tribesmen of the North. 

Eryn returned when the sun was slanting low and orange through the tree branches, her sacks full of edible roots and herbs and mushrooms. She drew out enough for supper and went to help Gimli, already cooking up the venison. He gave her a deep thoughtful look from under his shaggy eyebrows...it reminded her of her father's father...as if there was something he wished to say. She saw him glance at Legolas. The Elf remained silent. 

Eryn began dropping bits of herb and root and _chwand_ into Gimli's small pot.

"Here, here, what is _this_?" Gimli caught a bit of twiggy grey stuff before it hit his stew.

"Gives it a little spice, trust me. My mother learned it from her father."

"Elvish cooking, all those leaves and twigs and bark and bits just covers up the taste of good red meat."

Eryn caught the twiggy bit from Gimli's hand and dropped it in the stew. "Live dangerously."

Something in the night-murmur of the forest edge shifted. Eryn sat up, a mushroom poised over the pot.

Legolas stopped in the middle of his task and peered out into the twilight.

"I heard it too." Eryn said to him.

"What?" Gimli asked.

"Howling." Eryn said.

"Eh, wolves." the Dwarf grumbled, "Or Thulesilme's relatives."

"No." Legolas rose, eyed the pile of firewood, "We'll need more of that." He readied his bow and moved it closer to hand.


	7. Chapter 7

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Chapter 7

Fearaf Dulinnion saw the shapes emerge from the twilight edges of the far woods. He watched them from his tree-perch for a few long breaths, till he was sure what they were. He tested the wind once more; moving from them to him, and they were a good two leagues away. But they were crossing the trail he had been on only hours before. They would find his trail and follow it, for they had been bred by the Dark Powers to hate his kind. It mattered not that their Lord was gone, they continued on, ever fewer, ever smaller, less powerful, as his folk preyed on them...but they continued.

And Fearaf was alone. 

He did not like being alone, in his few summers he had never been alone. But that, like many other things had changed. He eyed the distant shapes and shivered. He was out of reach of their jaws here in this tree, but he was not safe. If there were orcs with them, as there often were, they would bring fire. To the north lay a farm, less than a league away, but he would have to run toward the wargs to reach it. South lay another farm, farther away, too far away. And he was not sure the farmers would give him any warmer reception than the wargs. But there was that thin curl of smoke he had seen at the edges of Fangorn itself. Hunters, maybe, or perhaps, against all hope, a wandering company of Elves. At least they were not likely orcs, not that close to the Great Wood.

Silent as an owl, he climbed down the tree, adjusted his quiver and light pack, his strung bow ready in his hand. Then he began to run.

Quiet as owlflight, and nearly as invisible, the greys and browns of his leather tunic and leggings vanished in the gathering dusk. Not even the deer looked up from their browsing.

But wargs didn't need to see him, their noses were keener than any hound's.

The dusk deepened, the daybirds stilled their voices, a lone nightbird called out. An owl swept over and vanished in the treeshadow, a single squeak announced the success of its hunt. 

Fearaf, _Wolf Spirit _his mother had called him; he was fast and tireless and loved to run in the dusk, and his eyes saw more in it than any of his folk. He needed those eyes now, the deer track he followed twisted over root and branch and rock, then dived into thicket and low tangley branch. But the deer knew the best way and he followed. He ran on, and on and on. Behind he could hear the howls that turned blood to ice, then silence, even more frightening.

The rumor of the forest spoke of strangers in the woods, of a hunt, earlier in the day.

The nightbirds stilled their voices. Even the soft treewhisper ceased. Fearaf kept an eye out for places he could make a stand.

He ran over a mushroom patch, full of the scent of turned earth and plucked mushrooms.

There were no more howls now, they were close, running hard, hunting, only the thud of their feet and the chuff of their breath disturbed the forest.

The scent of woodsmoke came to Fearaf's nose. He drew a deep breath, lightened his feet and put forth one last burst of speed.

His first sight of the fire did little to ease his heart. He catapulted over a half-rotted tree-trunk, a snarl of tree-roots and a boulder the size of a wagon. Two huge white bears charged out of the firelight, a goat let out a shriek of panic and ran straight into his knees. 

Then there was the ferocious looking Dwarf swinging the biggest axe he'd ever seen, right at his head.


	8. Chapter 8

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Chapter 8

Legolas heard the howls, then the silence. The frightened silence of the nightbirds and of the trees themselves. He heard the fell footfalls of the wargs and the light desperate step of their prey.

A sound that brought joy and fear to him all at once. The warg's prey ran like an Elf, and he was heading straight for their camp. Legolas called to Eryn to get her bow. Together they drew pony and goat into the center of the camp circle, with the dogs guarding them. He was starting in the wargs' direction when the wargs' prey blew over the top of the nearest boulder at falcon speed.

Gimli's axe whisked through the end of the Elf's long dark braid and connected with the head of warg one with a satisfying _thunk! _Legolas lodged an arrow in its heart for good measure, and in the throat of the one behind it. Wargs three and four circled and began coming over the boulders to the east, straight into Eryn's well-placed arrows. The dark Elf rolled and came up firing.

There were enough wargs for all of them, more than enough. And now the wargs had caught onto the strategy of circling their prey, they poured over the rocks from all directions. 

The goat huddled by the fire, screaming, Glorinn spun in circles, ears flattened, back hunched, hind legs cocked and loaded like a crossbow. The great white dogs stood between them and the wargs like silver swords in a black night.

The wargs snarled around the small circle of light, a raging river of dark. The three elf-bows sang. Eryn and the two Elves fought in silence, but the boulders echoed with fierce epithets in Khuzdul as Gimli cursed the foul beasts from nose to tail.

Legolas saw the dark Elf fire, from an arm's length away, into the eye of one warg. It kept coming.

Straight into the jaws of Ancalinte. She reared and met it in midair, like a white avalanche off a mountain. It fell, sprawling half in the fire, thrashed back, and died with her jaws locked around its throat. 

The goat scrambled in circles, wanting to gain the high ground of the boulders, but cut off by the ring of wargs. Glorinn let fly with both heels and caught one square in the jaw, it fell, broken-necked by the fire. The goat squealed and ran to the other side of the pony. Finlos charged, again and again, blowing wargs over like winter wind, killing them with jaws or knocking them down and letting the archers take their toll.

The bows sang. Warg eyes gleamed, and went out, like candles in a gale.

The dark Elf knelt, one last arrow fitted to his bowstring. 

Silence, firecrackle, the panting of the great dogs, the soft words of Eryn, calming Glorinn.

The wargs' prey blinked hair and dirt out of his eyes.

"_Suilad, mellon_."Legolas said, kneeling eye to eye with him. _Greetings friend. _He looked up with wide eyes the color of treeshadow, the terror and heat of the battle giving slow way to wonder. _Avari , _Legolas thought, one of the Dark Elves. 

"Ah, ahhh," the Dark Elf said. His breath still came hard, as if he had been running across all of Rohan. He looked uncertainly at Gimli, wiping the warg blood off his great axe. "Ah."

Legolas smiled, "Don't worry, he doesn't bite."

"Much." Eryn said. She came to Legolas' side. Ancalinte followed her.

"Ah." the Dark Elf said. His breathing began to slow.

There was, Legolas thought, something in his eyes like a new opened leaf. Something he was not used to seeing in the eyes of one of his own folk. Something...

"What's your name?" Eryn said. Anca poked her great wet nose into the Elf's neck.

He unclenched his hand from his bow, laid it gently down, extended the hand in greeting. "Fearaf. Fearaf Duilinion of Clan Celduin." His other hand went to Anca's wooly head.

...something young, Legolas thought. Not just younger than the great trees of Fangorn, younger than the saplings. "Are you all right?" he asked.

Fearaf nodded, he rubbed Anca's head, his eyes and body gradually relaxing. 

"I am Legolas Thranduilion of Greenwood the Great. This is Eryn, and that is Gimli, Gloin's son, of the Lonely Mountain."

"And this?" Fearaf asked, smiling at the dog.

"Ancalinte." Eryn said."That one is Finlos."

"Would that I had such dogs! No warg would dare come near me!"

"They have never fought them before." Eryn said.

Legolas could see pride mingled with some surprise in her glance at Ancalinte. "Huan the Wolfhound would have done them honor had he seen their battle tonight." Legolas said. 

Gimli's voice came from the other side of the fire. "Well it seems Thulesilme has survived the Battle of the Wargs. And one lies dead before his den. And he half its size!"

Fearaf rose, one hand still tangled in Ancalinte's fur. "What is that?" He moved, quiet as a cat, to Gimli's side, and peered into the rock crevice. 

"Thulesilme." Eryn said, she looked at Legolas. "Do you want to hear his tale?"

Fearaf sat, chewing on fresh venison and the mushrooms and roots whose beds he had run over in his flight from the wargs. The great dogs lay some distance from the fire, pony and goat sandwiched between them. Thulesilme came from his den, eyed the dogs, and circled on the other side of the fire to where Legolas sat. He stretched out by the Elf's side. Legolas ran a gentle hand over his haunch, drawing healing energy from the earth itself. Gimli hunched on the other side of the fire, as far from the great toothy jaws as he could politely be.

Fearaf heard the tale of Thulesilme told mostly by Eryn, pacing back and forth, punctuating her words with gestures like swaying branches and diving hawks and closing jaws. He watched her with wonder growing in his eyes. A shadow passed over his face when she spoke of the dead mother. Legolas alone saw the flint-hard glitter in his eyes when Fearaf said softly, "Edain. With their sheep and their fire and their clearings. There will someday be no woods left." He looked up into Eryn's eyes and caught himself, "These new settlers, I mean." _Not all the Edain, perhaps._

Eryn seemed not to notice. She handed him a pup, then all three, watched him cradle them in his arms much as Legolas had done. Elf and Dwarf saw the soft look in his eyes as he sang to them.

Watching him, Legolas saw again the new-leaf look of his eyes, of his movements. Something he had not seen in a very long time among any Elves. "Where is your clan?" he asked. 

"I lost them two months ago."

Eryn gave him a sharp, sympathetic look, "They are...dead?"

"No...at least I think not. No, I would know. I was running under the stars one evening, I ran far that night, and when I returned they were gone. The fire yet burned, and some of the heavier gear was still there. There were signs of haste, but no battle." he looked almost embarrassed, " I lost their trail. And I have not yet found it."

"I thought all Elves could track the wind over a field of rocks." Gimli said.

Fearaf gave him a cool look.

"It is not a skill you learn in a few seasons." Legolas said, "It can take longer than the lives of the great trees of Fangorn to do it well."

Fearaf gestured toward a slender young tree at the edge of the firelight, "That beech has seen more summers than I."

Gimli's eyebrows shot up. He looked at Legolas, "And I thought you were all so old that only Fangorn himself made you feel young."

Legolas smiled at the memory of something he had said a seeming age ago at the edges of Fangorn. 

"What will you do?" Eryn asked.

Fearaf shrugged, "Keep looking." He stared into the fire.

__

Keep looking? Alone? It's not good to be alone, Wolf Spirit. Everyone needs a pack, a clan. Even if they are not your kin. Legolas glanced at Gimli.

Fearaf looked up at Legolas, half hearing his thought. There was a shadow of something in his eyes, like an uncertain yearling wolf without a pack. One still trying to look strong to a passing bear.

"It's late, you have run far and fought hard tonight. Better than many with far more years. Sleep now, the dogs will stand watch." Legolas said.

Fearaf nodded his thanks, unrolled a blanket from his pack and curled up near the fire. Eryn saw to her animals, then rolled out her blanket near him. They were soon asleep.

Gimli noticed the young Elf slept with his eyes closed. "I thought..." he began.

"He's young." Legolas said.

"More pups." Gimli said.

"Indeed."

"What about the goat?"

"Mahahaha!" the goat quipped from the other side of the fire.

Thulesilme yawned and eyed the goat. Legolas gave him a long hard look, he fixed the Elf with dark, bright eyes and strolled back to his rock, with only a slight hitch in his gait.

"He, at least, seems remarkably well-healed." Gimli said.

"Yes. Though it will be some time before he will hunt on his own."

"You mean to camp here till then? What about the goat?"

"Thulesilme can travel with us." Legolas kept his eyes on Gimli's face, his statement half a question. 

The Dwarf nodded. "The goat." 

"Tomorrow. We'll see what Eryn does."

"She needs to..."

Legolas fixed Gimli with a look much like he had given Thulesilme.

The Dwarf let out a huff of breath. "Elves," he muttered, and eyed the sleeping one. _I am surrounded and outnumbered_. He began arranging his own bedroll, and looked again at the face of the sleeping Elf, relaxed, free of desperation and fear, and terribly young. Younger than any he had seen among even his own folk for some time.

Legolas saw his expression, fatherly, the way he had looked at Eryn.

One of the dogs rose, circled and flumped down again in a more comfortable position.

"Am I seeing things, or is that dog growing fat on our venison?" Gimli said.

"Ancalinte will soon have pups of her own."

Gimli's eyebrows did their ferret dance again, then his eyes widened as if he had seen Smaug's treasure room himself. "As Fearaf said, if he had dogs like those, no warg would come near him. If the _settlers_ had dogs like those, they would not have to worry about wargs or wolves!" 

"The settlers might not feel the need to shoot every predator they see, and Thulesilme would be safe." Legolas added.

"And the goat could be paid for." Gimli eyed Eryn. "If someone taught them how to train the dogs." 

"To care for them. They are born knowing how to guard." Legolas frowned, "But the settlers need to be taught about the forest as well as the dogs." He looked long at Eryn and Fearaf. 

"Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"

"Rangers have long wandered the wild, guarding against the dark, and the blood of Rangers flows in her veins."

"And who would know more about the woods than a Wood Elf!" Gimli paused, his look darkened."Except that Anduin is near, and Anduin leads down to the sea. And one day he will hear the gulls wailing in some dark marsh and forget Thulesilme, Fangorn and Eryn."

"He is Avari." Legolas said quietly.

"Wood Elves Dark Elves Light Elves Grey Elves Green Elves Purple Elves...it is all the same."

"Did you not hear me before? The Avari do not go to the Sea."

"Eh?" 

"He will likely stay here."

The Dwarf sat silent for a few long slow breaths, considering this. "Then he has a stake in this place," Gimli's words fell off, _as you no longer do, _though those words remained unspoken. "They would make a good team." he said finally.

Legolas nodded.

"Well then, it's solved. We will tell them what we think in the morning. "

"No, _Mellon nin, _they must decide how this tale ends."

"Not all of us run on Elvish Time, we cannot sit here in these rocks forever. A little advice wouldn't hurt, especially to such young pups as those two."

Legolas shook his head.

Gimli leaned forward, "_Mellon nin_, there are times when even Elves should give advice." Their eyes, earth-brown and sea-grey, locked. "And you are perhaps more, ah, _diplomatic_ than I."

At that Legolas smiled. He rose, picked up his Lorien cloak, softened and stained with leagues of travel and battle. He drew it around himself and found a good spot in the soft earth and leaf litter at the base of one great tree. "I hear you, _mellon nin, _we will see what the morning brings."


	9. Chapter 9

__

Chapter 9

The morning brought bright light and a warm breeze up from the valley, and the scent of strangers to the noses of Ancalinte and Finlos. They stood at attention, guarding the approach to the rock camp, low growls rising in their throats. 

The Elves were up in a flash, bows at the ready, Eryn not far behind them. Gimli still snored in his cloak by the fire.

Legolas leaped, light as a fox, to the top of one of the boulders and peered out into the growing light. He turned and waved down the two drawn bows behind him. "No wargs, or orcs this time. You won't need those."

The sun peered through the edges of the trees, birds woke and sang and went about their morning business. Legolas found the pot of last night's stew and set it on the fire, then began folding some of the larger tree leaves into cups. Eryn and Fearaf watched him uncertainly, peering often back down the trail. He motioned for them to come to the fire. Finlos and Ancalinte lay down, watching the trail to the farms below. Legolas gave Gimli's foot a light kick, "Wake up, it's time for First Breakfast."

Gimli sat up in time to hear a light crunch of brush and see a little black and white dog trot up over one of the boulders bordering their camp.

"_Suilad!" _Legolas rose and greeted the newcomers, gesturing to the tree roots and rocks as if in his father's halls. "Sit, there is a fine stew simmering on the fire."

Cal and Cam and Cel, paused, looked around the camp, their eyes taking in the great white dogs, the pony, a young boy with a lumpy tunic, the extra Elf, and most importantly; their missing goat. They exchanged silent glances. Cel's hand held several arrows; Eryn's, Fearaf's, and a few of the fine shafts of Lothlorien. He came forward, held out the arrows; "These are yours, no doubt, we heard the howls last night, wargs, I guess. We followed Nip and then your smoke, not knowing what we would find." He looked around the camp, "It seems you didn't need our help after all." He eyed the goat once more, but said nothing. The other two shoved past him and sat by the stew pot. 

Gimli began dishing out First Breakfast. "My apologies, young masters, we did not bring our fine pottery, as we did not expect guests so soon."

The boys seemed not to mind, cradling the strange leaf cups in their broad hands and slurping the stew with relish, and some dribbling.

Legolas made introductions all around, then sat by the fire with a leaf-cup of stew. Fearaf sat near him, trying to blend into the rocks.

"Well, what happened?" Cam said to the Dwarf. "It must have been a terrific fight."

"Though we saw none of your wargs." Cal said.

"Did you pay no attention to their tales the other night? Wargs vanish in the sun!" Cam smacked his brother's arm. "Well, what of your tale Master Dwarf? We plucked many arrows from the ground, and that was only on this side of your camp."

"Eryn is the best storyteller here." Gimli said.

Legolas gestured to Eryn. He saw the dark look in her eyes, like stormclouds. Though her face was still and unreadable, he could sense her setting her will like a rock wall. "Tell them." he said to her.

She hesitated, eyes going from one farmboy to the other, then back to Legolas. His face was sweet and calm as morning, but there was a light in his eyes like an eagle's. His _tell them _was a bit more than a request. She eyed the farmboys again, with their well-made bows and the all-too-familiar arrows. She noted their simple, but well woven tunics, hunting knives in sturdy, worn sheaths and the adoration in the eyes of the little black and white dog. And the way Cal's hand strayed to Nip's ears, ruffling them affectionately. And the way Cam slipped Nip bits of his stew. She glanced back at Gimli, his face unreadable under beard and eyebrows, and at Legolas. 

_Go ahead_. It was as clear as if he had said it out loud.

So Eryn told the tale of the Battle of the Wargs; at first her voice was quiet, distant, as if it was too great a thing to tell to farmers, as if they would not understand. Then, seeing the look in their eyes, keen and excited, her voice rose and her hands flew like wild birds in flight. Fearaf sat quiet, huddled in his cloak like a rabbit trying to stay hidden, on the other side of Legolas until Eryn dragged him forth to tell his part of the tale. It was Eryn though, who had to speak of his skill with the bow, for he would say nothing of it himself.

Lin's sons stared in wonder at the two great white dogs. Finally Cel spoke, "Where could we find dogs like that, I wonder?"

"They would guard your flocks well." Legolas said, laying a long, meaningful glance on Eryn.

"There are few others, and those that breed them live far from here." she said with an air of finality.

The boys faces fell, disappointed.

A long soft stream of Sindarin came from behind Eryn. '_There is still the matter of the goat. And Thulesilme. You are the one who can make them understand about Thulesilme's children. They will not listen to an Elf of the Wood, but they may listen to you. And you have a way to pay for the use of the goat, too, in Ancalinte's children.' _

'Leave my pups with foolish strangers who know nothing of galadhremmin ennorath?'

'Teach them. Teach the pups to guard their flocks, teach the farmers to guard the woods. It's your world now,what will you do with it?'

The eyes of Lin's sons went from one to the other in uncertainty. They could only see that there was some disagreement between the girl and the Elf.

Gimli caught some of it, and Fearaf understood wholly. _'Show them the pups.' _ He said, and came to her side, one hand held out.

Eryn stood, for an age it seemed, then reached into her tunic and drew forth the pups. She laid one in Fearaf's hands, and cradled the other two herself. 

"What are those?" Cam set down his half-empty stew cup and peered into Eryn's hands, "Hounds." he said finally, "Strangely marked. Where did you find them?"

_'Tell them the tale.' _Legolas said. _'Now is your chance.'_

Cal peered at the one Fearaf was holding, frowning, "Odd hounds." He said as it yawned wider than anything that small possibly could.

"They are not hounds." Eryn said at last. _'Legolas, can you call their father out?'_

He went to the rock where Thulesilme still lay hid, knelt and spoke words as soft as live fur. Thulesilme came out, and stood before him, rubbing his great jaws against the Elf's shoulder.

Eryn studied the faces of the three farmboys, waiting for them to say this was one of their wargs.

"Handsome beast." Cal said, "Hunting dog?"

"One of your wargs, or a neighbor's." Eryn said, her face once more as hard as rock. She reached into her quiver and pulled out the arrows she had found with the female, she gave them to Cel. "Yours?" Her voice had an edge like a hunting knife.

"I made them for Giliel. She and her sister are alone, with their sheep, down the valley. She told me they were being plagued by wargs and wolves. They often go hunting on the edges of the forest, they have seen strange things there." he frowned now at Thulesilme.

"Well this time they were not hunting wargs. And the wolves are all long gone from this place, not that they ever plagued anyone." she snapped.

__

Legolas saw the hard light come back into her eyes. _'Eryn, anger will do no good here.'_

She met his eyes for a few long heartbeats; eyes clear as bright morning light, set in a sweet, fair face little older, it seemed, than her own. But those eyes had seen much, not just long years under the trees of Eryn Lasgalen, but terror beyond words and grief beyond tears and great shining joy, more than she would ever see. He was the son of Elvenkings and the faithful companion of a King of Men. There was wisdom in his glance and in his words. 

Eryn let out a long breath and turned back to the farmboys. She was aware of Fearaf standing by her shoulder, cradling the third pup. "This," she said at last, stroking a pup, "is no warg, no wolf, no hound. It is Thulesilme, and his fathers awoke in the dark before the sun, before even the Firstborn sang to the stars." She felt Fearaf shift his stance as one of the boys put out a hesitant hand to touch one of the pups. She saw the pup cradled in a gentle male embrace; Fearaf's long, fine-carved hands below, and Cal's broad, strong one above. There was a sort of wondering grin on the farmboy's face. 

"They say Fangorn holds strange things. Things Men have never seen." he glanced up at Fearaf's face.

"It is true," Fearaf said softly, "I have seen a few of them."

"You have? What?" Cal's face held growing wonder, and something else.

The young Elf nodded, slowly, hesitantly. "Trees that hunt the remnants of the Dark Hordes, and the giant shepards that tend them. And...and other things..."

Cal's eyes widened with something close to fear. 

"There are places in Fangorn where Men should never go, but it is not evil. And it is not concerned with your gardens and your sheep. It is the last remnant of the great forest that once covered Middle-earth. It only wishes to continue with its own life, its own place in Middle-earth." Eryn was almost surprised to hear her own voice say these things.

"Then these...dogs...are part of that?"

"They do not go into the forest, they love its edges, coming out under the stars to hunt. But not sheep!" she said quickly. _Probably not, at least, s_he thought. She caught sight of Ancalinte out of the corner of her eye, turned and called the great dog over. "What Legolas said is true. If you had dogs like these you would not have to worry about wargs or orcs or even a very hungry Thulesilme." She knelt and rubbed Anca's great round belly, "Not all who breed them live far from here. Anca and Finlos are mates, and they have had litters before. Good pups who grow up strong and brave, like their sire and dam." She looked up at Cam, still stroking the pup in Fearaf's hands. She studied his face with its strong stubborn jawline, and its dark, earth-brown eyes, so different from the falcon-like beauty of the Elves. She eyed the close-cropped hair, like Thulesilme's fur, that made his head look look as rugged as a mountain boulder, not particularly fair. Then she thought of the moment by the spring with Legolas, when she had seen through the tree, to the whole _gladhremmin ennorath_. She stared at this young man, as strange to her as Legolas and Fearaf were to him.

Then she looked deeper. It startled her. Like Gimli, he had the strength of the roots of mountains, and like Legolas he had the love of growing things, but he had also the changefulness of Men, the ability to adapt, to learn. And his heart held no darkness.

Eryn stood then, eye to eye with Cam, "I have need of a milk goat, for awhile. Perhaps you would like one of Ancalinte's pups, when they are born. I would give you one, or two, if I can use your goat for awhile longer."

He stared at her in surprise, glanced at his brothers, back at the slight girl who barely came to his shoulder, a girl in battered tunic and travel-stained boots who, it seemed, had stolen their best milk goat and now stood before him with the look of an eagle in its eyrie. He glanced at his brothers again.

"Ancalinte's pups would be better raised by a warm fire, with some sheep to guard."

Eryn turned, the voice was Gimli's. _I need no warm fire, _the words nearly fell out of her mouth...

...but Cel spoke first, "You would show us how to train them?"

"Well, yes, of course."

"You've traveled far, it seems" Cal said, "where are you staying?"

"Here....anywhere..."

"Well we have room..."

"And the pony..."

"And there is work for Finlos..."

"...and your bow as well..."

The voices of the three brothers piled on top of Eryn's and each other's, spilling out ideas for the raising of pups and the harboring of dog trainers. There would be room for Thulesilme's children as well, and enough milk goats to go around, and if Ancalinte had as many pups as she'd had before there would be enough for farms all over the valley and then...

Eryn escaped and came to sit by Legolas, Fearaf sat beside her. Thulesilme stayed with his shoulder leaning against Legolas' side. They watched the farmboys' animated discussion. 

Fearaf's eyes went from Cal to Cam to Cel, with a look of utter confusion, "How do they know what each other are saying?"

"What have I gotten into?" Eryn muttered. But her face held a look of amusement.

"You would only have to stay there till midsummer." Legolas suggested. "By then, Anca's pups will be big enough to go to new homes, and Thulesilme's children would need to learn to hunt, and return to the edges of Fangorn."

"I'll need someone to help with that I think. Someone who can understand the whispers of trees and coax Thulesilme from his den." She looked up at Legolas.

"If two people are lost, it is best if one of them stays in one place."

Eryn turned in surprise to Gimli. "What are you talking about?"

He nodded at Fearaf. "He is running around in circles looking for his kin, and they are likely doing the same. One of them should stay put."

Fearaf's eyebrows wrinkled into a puzzled squiggle.

Gimli leaned in close to him, looked him in the eye, "_Dartho a Eryn_." He said.

_Stay with Eryn. _The peculiarity of an Elvish-speaking Dwarf struck Fearaf rather like a rock to the head. He opened his mouth but no words made an appearance. He looked at Legolas.

Legolas eyed the Dwarf and his face broke into a smile, to Fearaf he said, "We will spread the word of your whereabouts. And we will come back at Midsummer to help return Thulesilme's children to the wild. Till then, you two have much to do; teaching Ancalinte's pups, and beginning the training of three small wild things." He leaned closer to Fearaf, "Perhaps you can convince them that the taste of sheep is evil."

Fearaf nodded, his face a mask of strength and resolve.

To Eryn, Fearaf looked a bit like Glorinn, the first day she had introduced him to a saddle. Full of uncertainty. She laid a gentle hand on his arm, gave him the conspiratorial smile of a companion-in-arms, "If you can survive the Invasion of the Sheep, so can I." She gave Lin's sons another long appraising look, but there was still amusement in her eyes. "As long as they don't try to put me in one of their sister's silly frocks."

Fearaf turned to her, "Silly?"

"Yeah, focks; silly, can't hunt, can't ride, can't climb trees."

"Perhaps, but once in awhile it might be fair to look upon."

The two stood, eye to eye; the sapling Avari, with his waterfall of nightshade hair and eyes like mist in the hollows of the hills, the girl of the Dunedain, strong and sharp as a falcon feather, as a knife blade of the Eldar. An understanding passed between them.

"Well," said Gimli, "that settles that. Now that the Elves have finally stopped talking endlessly, we can go have second breakfast."

"And," said Legolas, "There is a small girl who wished to learn how to use an Elvish bow."

"And I can get my pony back."

"We'll make a rider of you yet." Legolas said, laughing.

"No, no, no, I will still need to rest my rump and stretch my legs, just not quite this far."

They set off down over the hill toward tilled land and clouds of sheep, warm fire and ale and bread. Legolas turned at the edge of the rock circle, and met the dark eyes of Thulesilme. Enough game lay by his den for a few days, and he was strong enough now to hunt small things on his own. They would return soon, Eryn and Legolas and Fearaf...and maybe some of Lin's sons, to bring Thulesilme another feast. Then Eryn and Fearaf would return to the valley, and Legolas and Gimli would return to the edges of Fangorn. Thulesilme would go with them for awhile, despite the Dwarf's misgivings. It would be good to have the company of such an ancient creature, to carry his tale back to Mirkwood and beyond. Maybe even Gimli would come to appreciate his beauty in time. And he and Gimli would return in the summer, to take the pups on a journey of learning; all five of them.

Thulesilme turned and trotted off into the bush. Legolas watched the movement of brush, the rumor of the birds till Thulesilme was out of even his sight. He stood for awhile, vaguely aware of the vanishing hoofbeats of Glorinn, the heavy thunk of Gimli's boots, the lighter tread of the feet of Lin's sons, the fading "maahaahaa" of the goat. He had stood like this an age ago, a heartbeat ago, on the edge of Fangorn, peering in wonder into the wood, while a Ranger sat in deep thought against a tree-bole, and a Dwarf fingered his axe nervously by the fire. There were deep places there where no man had ever walked, that even his own folk had forgotten. They called him with voices as deep as tree roots, as soft as wind-whisper. Voices almost as powerful as the distant wailing of gulls. 

"Legolas!" The voice came faint from down the hill. Faint but deep and strong as mountain roots. Reluctantly Legolas turned from the wood, and headed down over the hill to join his friends. "Legolas!" The voice came a bit louder now.

He smiled at the growing impatience in the Dwarf's voice. 

Gimli stood in the middle of the trail like a dislodged mountain boulder, the others had vanished into the bush farther down, only a faint disturbance of birds a few hundred paces away marked their passage. "If we all ran on Elvish time, we would no doubt starve." He cast a dark look toward the wood. "I suppose you haven't seen enough of Fangorn yet." He looked up at the Elf's face, "I suppose we'll be tromping around in the depths of it talking to trees before too long."

"Not yet. Not till Thulesilme travels with us awhile. Not till Thulesilme's children can hunt on their own."

Gimli made a grunt of approval. 

"Then we will go to the deep places of the Entwood and see such trees as are nowhere else to be found in Middle-earth!" The look on the Elf's face was one of pure joy.

"Elves." Gimli muttered, shaking his head. He turned and began tromping back down the trail, behind the Elf this time.

Up the wind from the valley below came a distant sound, like a faint mournful song. Legolas halted and stared out into the sun, still walking up the east side of the sky. His expression shifted, like a cloud passing over the sun.

Gimli frowned, he had heard it too, and though he had not Elf-sight he knew what Legolas saw. "Are you sure you will make it to the depths of Fangorn?" he said softly.

The Elf looked away from the distant sky, and met the earthbound eyes of his friend, saw the look in them, and remembered Gimli's words long ago; _There are countless things to see in Middle-earth, and great works to do. But if all the fair folk take to the Havens it will be a duller world for those who are doomed to stay_. And Meriadoc of the Shire had said; _There will always be some folk, big or little, who need you. _

Yes, there were yet things to do here in Middle-earth. Places to see, to feel, smell, taste, to experience, to sing of. Wisdom to learn, to pass on. Songs that could be made, to carry back over the lonely sea. 

And perhaps the sea would not need to be so lonely...

A smile touched Legolas' face like sun. "Yes, _mellon nin_, Fangorn calls, and you still have a promise to fulfill to see it!"

Gimli nodded, a look of relief on his furry face. "Indeed, I do, as you fulfilled your promise to share the wonder of the Glittering Caves. But for now, let's go eat. And I think they still have some of that ale left."

Legolas clapped a hand onto Gimli's broad shoulder, grinning, "They won't for long."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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"Come Gimli!" said Legolas. "Now by Fangorn's leave I will visit the deep places of the Entwood and see such trees as are nowhere else to be found in Middle-earth. You shall come with me and keep your word; and thus we will journey on together to our own lands in Mirkwood and beyond." To this Gimli agreed, though with no great delight, it seemed.

(Many Partings, Return of the King, LOTR, JRR Tolkien)


	10. Appendix

I started reading LOTR backwards, with the appendixes first. Tolkien believed in the wonders of the Appendix, so, following the footsteps of the Master, we present:

A Field Guide to Various Beastes of Middle Earth 

(and some other stuff you really didn't need to know...)

**__**

The author is a serious student of Tolkien's works and...ok, well not really, but I have read farther than the Silmarillion (Unfinished Tales, various bios, the Letters and parts of HoME). When not chasing my cats off the keyboard, I play with mustangs (equine) run on snow (three Siberian huskies and a dogsled helps, although my cousin roped me into snowboarding once...it's ok, the orcs broke my fall) I have decorated underwater Christmas trees, and paddled lakes, rivers, and mosquito-infested salt marshes in my 17 1/2 ft. sea kayak, Makenuk's Fin. As a volunteer for local wildlife rehabbers I've demonstrated projectile pooping to third graders (with the aid of Thermal, the Wonder Hawk), driven in a closed van with a vomiting vulture, and illustrated a display; "Soil, It's Not Just Dirt" for a local county park (ask me about the dancing salamanders). I learned to swing a broadsword in the SCA, have rowed a viking longship with The Longship Company (Oakley Maryland) and can occasionally hit the broad side of a stack of haybales with an arrow at twenty paces. Anything else you need to know is at www.geocities.com/makenuk.

I do welcome feedback. Now wheretheheck did I put that mithril plate armour...?

**__**

Elvish 101:

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(A complete listing of the Elvish in this tale is farther on in the appendix)

When I first read LOTR and started playing D&D back in the First Age (1978), I picked up a copy of Ruth Noel's Languages of Tolkien's Middle Earth, the only thing available to me in those days of Internet Impairment, since roasted to a crisp in one article as containing several major grammatical inaccuracies. (I had not found the other, more esoteric sources of enlightenment yet). I mainly used Noel's LTME as a nifty dicionary to make up cool names for D&D characters, illustration titles, two cats(Dae-el, Sindarin), dogs (Kris, the "secret Elvish names" of the sled team, and a future Siberian who shall be Legolas, because he can run on snow), two horses (Olori Eldalie and Olori Cuthalion), a 1974 Blazer (Landroval), and the present dogcamp'yakvan; Fearaf. 

In my recent wanderings in Middle Earth, I've discovered the world of the Serious Linguists; three webrings for the elventongues under the sky.The amount of scholarly research done on Tolkien's hobby is as intimidating as the endless orc hordes at the beginning of the "Fellowship" film and Helm's Deep put together. I wanted to publish this fanfic now, not at the end of the Fourteenth Age when I had finally become fluent in half a dozen forms of Elvish. 

This tale has gone through a few revisions: first I used the old Noel book, as well as Grey Company's excellent Elvish dialect (based on Tolkien's, but simpler to use and adapted to a role-playing situation) Then I found www.elvish.org which leads to various prose and poetry by Serious Linguists, and a wonderful Elvish/Polish/English dictionary of Sindarin words from all of Tolkien's writings. 

And had to rewrite the whole durn thing.

(I kept the Quenya...from Noel's book...name of "thulesilme" because nothing in Sindarin had the right sound (something echoing "thylacine"), or the sense of antiquity.)

Here's where to find The Sindarin Dictionary (and as a nifty side-effect you can learn Polish) You have to send to Poland for the CD (which involved jumping through a few hoops at the Post Office, howerver it wasn't as hard as it looked)...it is well worth it:

****

Ryszard Derdzinski

Ordonowny 9/29

41-209 Sosnowiec

Poland

galadhorn@inetia.pI.

Gwaith-I-Phethdain webpage WWW.GALADHORN.W.PI. 

Gwaith-I-phethdain is an interesting site in and of itself.

****

www.grey-company.org/language ( or type in "Tel'Mithrim" as a search engine) has a downloadable Elvish dictionary designed especially for role-playing. They based their "dialect" on Tolkien's Elvish, then took it off in new directions. It's adapted to a roleplaying environment, and contains a much more extensive dictionary, simplified grammar, and useful phrases Tolkien never thought of (like: go kiss an orc, and you're ugly and your mother dresses you funny). 

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When I started this tale, I had a moment of Geographical Impairment: I thought New Zealand , the real Middle-earth, had the same biology as Tasmania. Oooops. That problem solved, I bent the geography of Middle-earth anyway, (marsupials are native to North and South America, and Australia and Tasmania, period) because thylacines are the coolest thing since ents. Anyway, Fangorn is ancient, and would likely have some very strange things living in it.

"thule" Quenya for "spirit" 

"silme" Quenya for starlight 

"thulesilme": spirit(of the)starlight...(my compound word) with time, and enough speakers of the common tongue mangling it, it could become "thylacine

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On Thulesilme:** and convergent evolution**

The _Tasmanian "wolf"_ (because of its canine appearance) or _"tiger"_ (because of the vertical stripes running from shoulder to tail) or _thylacine_ (thylacinus cynocephalus) was the largest of the recent (non-fossil, actually co-existing with humans) marsupial carnivores. (In case you missed Biology 101: relatives include the Virginia Possum of North America, the Kangaroo, and the Koala...and oh yeah, the Tasmanian Devil...what? you thought he was just a cartoon?)

Thylacines were about the size of a Siberian Husky (about 30-70lbs., 2ft. high and 6ft. long, including tail). They look rather like a "yellow dog" type like the Dingo, Shiba Inu, or Carolina Dog (think short-haired coyote, or Old Yeller with pricked ears), but in reality, a whale would be more closely related to your dog than this critter; an excellent example of convergent evolution, where unrelated lifeforms end up looking like each other because they live in the same environment, eat the same food, and do the same biological job (like whales, fish, penguins and ichthyosaurs). Thylacines were the color of winter grass (greyish or tawny) with dark vertical tiger stripes from shoulder to tail, the largest, longest stripes over the hips. 

They moved more or less like dogs, but could sit upright on their thick-at-the-base tails, like a kangaroo (some observers claim they hopped short distances, though they are not a bit kangaroo-like; their front end is heavier and the hindquarters more lightly muscled compared to a roo). While all dogs' feet are webbed, to hold the toes together while running, the thylacines' toes are not. There are some vague observations of their running gaits which suggest their trot or canter pattern may have been different from dogs'. (dogs do a diagonal trot (L-front and R-rear together), and a _rotary_ gallop/canter, unlike the horse's _transverse*_ gallop.)They could leap 2-3 meters with great agility. One captive specimen was observed leaping into the rafters (nearly eight feet up) of a "small half-finished house" and leaping from crossbeam to crossbeam under the roof like a cat. The proportions of the legs suggest a compromise between a running and bounding animal; the hocks and wrists are set lower than a dog's, making the lower part of the leg shorter (more like a cat). Their body proportions are similar to the clouded leopard.

(*transverse: 3 beats;1.rear foot, 2._diagonal pair_, 3.front foot...

rotary: 3 beats; 1.rear foot, 2._pair on_ _same side_, 3.front foot)

There are slight differences in the skull and teeth (thyls have a narrower nose, bigger eye-sockets, smaller brain, and four more teeth, among other things)(wolves have 42 teeth...easy to remember: it's Gimli's orc score at Helm's Deep). There are excellent photos of them "yawning", which may be a threat display. (It is in possums). The stretch of the gape is amazing, no other mammal can open its jaws quite that wide. (There are photos still in existence, and easily found on the internet). 

Little is known about their behavior, even though many were kept in zoos. They seemed to be shy, secretive, rather than aggressive. Their preferred habitat was a mosaic of dry eucalypt forest, wetlands, grasslands, emerging to hunt on grassy plains and open woodlands during the evening, night and early morning (more "crepuscular": twilight active, than "nocturnal": night active). Without the long legs and running feet of the similar wolf, thylacines followed prey at a slower, more relentless pace, and pounced from hiding, like cats. As far as we know, their main diet was wallabies, small mammals and birds.

Females, like all marsupials, carried the young in the pouch till they became too large. (Pouch time recorded by John Gould as 3 months: Richard Owen recorded young to 12 inches long in pouch) There are references to them using "lairs" at least, temporarily, to keep the kids while they hunted, until the young were big enough to follow on the hunt. Males had a rudimentary pouch (unique among marsupials). They generally had 3-5 pups, but with four teats, only that many would ever survive (they spend the early part of their pouch development firmly attached to the teat). 

They vanished from Australia long ago, when the first aboriginal humans brought the half-domesticated dogs called dingos (a successful competitor for the same game and habitat) to the continent. They survived in Tasmania, despite European settlement and bounties placed on their heads for presumed sheep killing...until the last known one, a female misnamed Benjamin, died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936.

JRR Tolkien was 44, and the Hobbit had just been accepted for publication.

...once in awhile "dreams and legends spring to life out of the grass"* ...someone will spot a fleeting shadow, a track, a few strange hairs, or report seeing a creature that wasn't quite a dog. Attempts have been made to find living thylacines, but none, so far, has succeded. 

(*Eomer, in "The Riders of Rohan" chapter of LOTR)

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Typing in "thylacine" as a search engine got me **www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/** (completely awesome site) and about 3590 more sites devoted to this critter. Some were sightings sites, with some hope offered that somewhere, in the last wild edges of the world, they may yet roam under the stars.

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also: http://vzone.virgin.net/brian.goodwin/thylacine.htm(sightings) www.parks.tas.gov.au/wildlife/mammals/thylacine.html (lots of stuff)

www.home.earthlink.net/~fstern1/art.htm (a young webmistress with some cool thyl-art) http://romeo.pembrokesc.vic.edu.au/home/tiger/stories3.html (sightings) www.maydena.tco.asn.au/Colbail/ (sightings)

****

Foot (er...paw) note:

Smithsonian Magazine, Feb. 2002: "Give the Devil His Due" article on the Tasmanian Devil (a dasyurid, the closest living relatives to the thylacine); Devils were once so rare, they were thought to be extinct. Tasmania is about the size of West Virginia, and there are now about 150,000 Tas-devils there. Dr. Menna Jones has been studying them for 12 years, has captured 310 animals and fitted 44 of them with radio collars. In her 12 years of studies, she has only seen half a dozen devils in the wild. 

Consider the thylacine sightings above...

...I wonder. 

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Elvish 102:

Unless otherwise noted this is Sindarin Elvish as put forth in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, or scholars thereof.

LOTR: Lord of the Rings, FOTR: Film of the Rings

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Eryn :woods, as in "Eryn Lasgalen" wood of the green leaves, the real name of Mirkwood

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Mae govannen, mellon = hail and well met, friend. Like Glorfindel's greeting to Strider (_Ai, na vedui dunadan, mae govannen_... LOTR), _mellon_ is friend, but you knew that (LOTR, the doors of Moria)

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daro = stop, used by Haldir in Lorien (LOTR) 

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Aniron = desire, as in the Enya song which is the background for the Aragorn/Arwen scene at Imladris in FOTR.

**__**

Legolas "is translated Greenleaf...a suitable name for a Woodland Elf though one of royal and originally Sindarin line...(you) might percieve the relation of the element -_las_ to lassi 'leaves', in Galadriel's lament, _lasse-lanta _'leaf-fall' = autumn...and _Eryn Lasgalen_...Technically Legolas is a compound of Sindarin _laeg_...fresh and green, and _go-lass _collection of leaves, foliage." 

"_Legolas_ means 'green-leaves', a woodland name - dialectal form of pure Sindarin _laegolas: lasse_ (High elven _lasse_, S. _las(s_)) 'leaf; _gwalassa/gwa-lassie _'collection of leaves, foliage' (H.E. _olassie_, S. _golas, -olas_); _laika_ 'green' - basis LAY as in _laire_ 'summer' (H.E. _laica_, S. _laeg_ (seldom used, usually replaced by _calen, _woodland _leg_).

(J.R.R. Tolkien in The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien by Humphrey Carpenter, 1981)

There you have it, the complete etymology of Legolas' name, from the Master himself.

"Legolas Greenleaf" first appears in The Fall of Gondolin (Book of Lost Tales), the first of the names of the Fellowship to be used in Tolkien's works. He is not, however, the Prince of Mirkwood. Gondolin's Legolas is a Noldorin Elf of the hidden city of Gondolin (whose king, Turgon, original wielder of Glamdring-Gandalf's sword, is Elrond's great-grandfather). He leads the refugees through a particularly hairy bit of wilderness because his "eyes were like cats' for the dark".

** __**

Gimli has its origins in the tongues of the Edain (humans to you), the Dwarves kept their real names to themselves (though I think Legolas might know Gimli's) If you try to translate it into Sindarin, you come up with things like: _gern, gem_ = worn, old, sickly, and _liw_ = fish. I don't hink Legolas tried to turn it into a Sindarin name...

**__**

Orlando Bloom on the other hand raises some interesting possibilities in Sindarin:

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bloom: niphredil, mallos, alfirin (uilos), elanor = various flowers of Middle-earth, 

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loth, elloth, lotheg = one flower, _gwaloth_ = bunch o' flowers, _imloth_ = valley of flowers, 

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edlothia = bloom (verb) to flower

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or = blood, a prefix for names of days of the week, and up-rise-high (I prefer the last one)

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ur = heat, fire (oh yeah!)

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lang = cutlass, sword, _lann_ = wide, broad (as in Landroval = broad-winged eagle, implying power and stability), _lant_ = clearing in a forest

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o = imperative suffix (as in daro! = stop) makening the word a command, or "of"

And if you spell Orlando sideways you get Ronald (minus an "o"), The first "R" of JRR Tolkien is, of course, Ronald. I can see the tabloid headlines now: _Tolkien reincarnated as one of his characters_ (there are a few other eerie similarities between them)...there's a really silly cartoon or fanfic in this.

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Cam = hand, cupped as in recieving

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Calad = light

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Eilian = rainbow

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Brethil = silver birch

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Celeg = swift

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Rhiw = winter

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Istil = moon

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Lasbelin = autumn

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Havo-dad: sit down, Aragorn's line to Leggy in FOTR/Fellowship at the Council of Elrond 

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Nirnaeth arnoidiad = a famous battle of the Silmarillion

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gaear, galadhremmin ennorath; I was searching for a word like "the Force" or "Circle of Life", or "chi" or the Iroquois _orenda_ (which sound_s _Elvish enough) or _mitakuye oyasin_. In the Sindarin Dictionary _galadhremmin_ = tree-woven, and _ennorath_ = Middle-earth, making galadhremmin ennorath something logical for an Elf of the woods to use as a "world tree" concept. _Gaer_ = awe, holy, and sounds a bit like _gaia_. the modern eath goddess concept.

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mitakuye oyasin; (mee-TAH-koo-yay oy-AH-sin)(as I remember) Lakota, roughly meaning; all things are related, all my relatives (Lakota, Dakota, Nakota; the Native American people of the plains called by others "Sioux")

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lirien I totally made this one up; but based on liriodendron (the scientific name for the tulip poplar tree, a lovely mallornish sort of tree native to North America). It actually makes a nice _golden_ dye, not blue. _Lir_ = row, _ien_ = maiden, girl in the Dictionary, maybe there's a legend associated with how this tree got its name?.

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Sweetgrass is a sweet-smelling native grass used by many American Indian tribes. It can be woven in baskets, burned like incense, or carried in a dry braid. _Melui_ = sweet, _glae_ = grass.

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Noro lim, noro lim! Glorfindel's line to Asfaloth in the Flight to the Ford of Bruinen scene in LOTR, faithfully recaptured by Arwen in FOTR...tearjerker for me as I once trained a grey Welsh-Arab pony to respond to that command...

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Glorinn _glor_ = gold, _inn _= inner meaning, heart

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Finlos, Ancalinte los = snow, anc = jaws, lint = swift, fin = hair. Snowmane (Theoden's horse) was translated as Lossfin in one elvish.org poem.

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Gwai wind, as in Gwaihir the windlord...Cal's idea of a funny name for a mule

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Gilrandir _gil_ = star, _randir_ = wanderer (as in Mithrandir)

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Araw is Sindarin for Orome, the vala of the hunt.

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Al'hin, mellon al = no/_not, hin = _here, now

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Sedho thalien, nuitho i 'ruith sedho = be still, thalion = strong, ien = maiden, nuitho i 'ruith = hold your wrath (Gandalf: FOTR)

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beleg angol cherdir erynist beleg = mighty, angol = wise, cherdir = master, eryn = woods, -ist = lore

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urentin nallant nirnaeth arnoded. tin = her/his, uren = heart, nallant = he cried, nirnaeth = tears, arnoded = endless

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laur inath arnediad bin revail gelaidh from a translation in Sindarin of Galadriel's lament in LOTR (with the addition of "laur" = golden)

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ura uren = it burns my heart (as in Legolas' line in Two Towers ..."the thought of those merry young folk driven like cattle burns my heart"...), _ur_ = fire, _uren_ = my heart (Aniron, FOTR soundtrack), _ura_ = my guess from words like _sila_ = shines, _luitha_ = enchants, _eria_ = rises

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aew = little bird

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Cherdir = master (as in teacher, Jedi Master type thing)

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urentin cuia eryn tin = his/her, uren = heart, cuia = lives, eryn = woods

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olonnen my best guess at this one: ol= dream, -nnen = past tense suffix

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Man pida gurdh? man = what, pida = is speaking, gur = heart, guren = my heart (in Sindarin Dictionary, uren in Aniron on FOTR soundtrack), -dh = "your"

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Man agorthadh man = what, agor = do, make, -dh = you suffix, -tha = furture suffix (one of several)

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hu-lin hu = dog, -lin = many

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agorthadh rochben agor = make, agorthadh = you will make, rochben = rider 

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gaurhoth host of evil werewolves, Men of the North often referred to natural wolves as _wargs _but properly _wargs_ is only applied to the ones corrupted by the Dark Powers.

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araf appears in the Sindarin Dictionary as a word for wolf, I've used it here for natural wolves

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Fearaf Dulinion fea = spirit, araf = wolf, dulinn = nightingale, ion = son of

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minui = first, _tadui_ = second, _nelui_ = third, 

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hubeleg = hu = dog, beleg = mighty

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suilad = Sindarin greeting

Yeah yeah, I loved Bambi too, and I volunteer with a couple of local wildlife rehabbers, but deer and rabbits _are_ at the bottom of the food pyramid...

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Wildlife Rehab 101: the silver-furred tree-climber

The "silver-furred tree climber" mentioned in this tale is the only marsupial I have had direct experience with. I've had the honor of raising a few 'possums (didelphus virginiana) for a local wildlife rehabber (and doing some wildlife lectures on them, with a reluctant possum clinging to a welder's glove on my hand). Their relatives were running around under the feet of T.Rex and Tyranosaur, the highly successful Virginia Opossum has survived unchanged since the Pleistocene (think hairy mammoths). They have a top speed of about 4mph, thumbs on all fours, (they leave lovely daisy prints in the snow), prehensile tails, dark bright eyes and charming whiskery faces. Their main defense (if not playing possum) is to open their amazingly huge mouths, hissing, and showing you all 50 teeth (more than any other North American mammal), the effect is rather like a small, furry alligator. There is a wonderful photo of a thylacine on one of the websites which shows much the same effect, in giant economy size.

North American 'possums have a dozen or so young in the pouch at once (13 teats)...gestation 12-13 days, pouch time about 2 months, weaned at 4 months. We raise small ones on kitten milk replacer (and a heating pad), and larger ones on cat food (they're actually omnivores, their unspecialized body type is adaptable to a wide range of habitat and food, including carrion, which is why they often end up roadside as carrion themselves). They are tame and easy to handle, but like all wildlife, we do not make pets of them, releasing them back into their native habitat as soon as possible. 

The same rehabber raised a few wallabies as well (we won't mention the Great Emu Roundup), making a cloth pouch and "wearing" the wallabies, much as their mothers would, which is where I got the idea for Eryn's pouch in this tale.

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for more info: www.riverotters.com

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Endangered Species 101:

Another local (southcentral PA, USA) rehabber is involved in two projects to bring back threatened or endangered species: Wendy Looker of Rehabitat is working on a barn owl breeding project (a threatened species in PA) and binturongs.

Binturongs (or bearcats) are large, vegetarian members of the civet family, and believed extinct in the wild. They look rather like a cross between a bear and a cat, or maybe a wolverine and a bear. Rehabitat has one of the highest breeding populations in the world; www.rehabitat.org

A Really Brief History of Middle Earth: 

Inspirations for this tale, and other things that relate to it.

**On Ithilien: **fairest province of Gondor: 

Someday my prince will come...into his own kingdom. It is hinted in LOTR that Ithilien and Minas Tirith are part of an eventual Elvish Restoration Project of Epic Proportions. 

"And I," said Legolas, "shall walk in the woods of this fair land, which is rest enough. In days to come, if my Elven-lord allows, some of our folk shall remove hither; and when we come it shall be blessed, for awhile. For awhile: a month, a life, a hundred years of Men. But Anduin is near, and Anduin leads down to the Sea. To the Sea!" (The Field of Cormallen, LOTR) 

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Pent Legolas: "Ar im padathon vi eryn endor vain hen i na idh far. Ned orath i telithar, ae hir nin Edhellen devitha, pin o gwaith vin anglennatha simen; ar im telim natha dor hin i alu, dan na lu thent. Na lu thent: ahad, cuil, haran inath in Edain. Dan Anduin nef, ar Anduin tog dadbenn na Aear. Na Aear!" (The same paragraph in Sindarin, as translated by Ryszard Derdzinski on Gwaith-i-Phethdain)

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And Minas Tirith: 

"They need more gardens," said Legolas. "The houses are dead, and there is too little

here that grows and is glad. If Aragorn comes into his own, the people of the Wood shall bring

him birds that sing and trees that do not die." (Legolas to Gimli as they enter Minas Tirith for the

first time, The Last Debate, The Return of the King, LOTR).

see also: http://www.xenite.org/tolkien/insiders_guide/1999-09-26.html 

"On the Elves of the Fourth Age"

**On the Glittering Caves and the Elf/Dwarf Pact:**

"Now the guests were ready and they drank the stirrup cup, and with great praise and friendship they departed, and came at length to Helm's Deep, and there they rested two days. Then Legolas repaid his promise to Gimli and went with him to the Glittering Caves; and when they returned he was silent, and would say only that Gimli alone could find fit words to speak of them. "And never before has a Dwarf claimed a victory over an Elf in a contest of words." said he. "Now therefore let us go to Fangorn and set the score right!" (Many Partings, LOTR) 

Legolas and Gimli went to the Glittering Caves before they visited Fangorn. I figured there was a lot of time (after the ending of LOTR) for them to wander about while Aragorn was king, for only after he died did Legolas follow his heart and go to the Sea..to the Sea...

...taking his friend Gimli, with him.

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the elvish way with all good beasts: 

My utterly favorite thing about the Prince of Mirkwood: "A smaller and lighter horse, but restive and fiery, was brought to Legolas. Arod was his name. But Legolas asked them to take off saddle and rein. "I need them not," he said, and leaped lightly up, and to their wonder Arod was tame and willing beneath him, moving here and there with but a spoken word: such was the elvish way with all good beasts." (The Riders of Rohan, LOTR) The main reason I fell for the dude with the longbow back in 1978.

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On Wargs:

In The Hobbit at the Battle of Five Armies Gandalf says: "The Goblins are upon you! Bolg of the North is coming, O Dain! whose father you slew in Moria. Behold! the bats are above his army like a sea of locusts. They ride upon wolves and wargs are in their train!" 

Tolkien may have been writing wolves from an old-fashioned pre-eco-revolution Eurocentric BigBadWolf perspective (with the idea, like the farmers in this tale, that all of them were Evil), but I have made a distinction between natural _wolves_ and _wargs_ here, assuming wargs to be a corruption of a natural form by the Dark Powers. My view of Wolf is more in line with the American Indian concept of wise teacher, family provider, good hunter, that is, someone to emulate.

In The Hobbit and in LOTR, we see wargs and orcs out in the day, but those are dark, cloudy, evil days. In Fellowship of the Ring, there is a great fight with wargs between the Fellowship's descent of Caradhras and heading for Moria; we see Legolas shoot many straight through the throat, but in the morning, there are no bodies, only Legolas' spent arrows on the ground.

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Crouching Tasmanian Tiger, Hidden Smaug (or; use the force Legolas)

While trying not to remove the characters too far from what we know of them from LOTR, I have taken a few liberties perhaps. The idea was to expand on the Elvish character/philosophy/"magic", go farther below the surface, and get inside the Elf's head a little. I drew on everything from American Indian philosophy to Asian martial arts and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

On Ents: 

"It is not wizardry, but a power far older," said Gandalf: "a power that walked the earth ere elf sang or hammer rang." They appar-ent-ly predate Elves. If you're wondering about the plausability of thylacines in Middle-earth, consider the fact that Fangorn Forest is ancient beyond belief and already has been described as having some strange things lurking in its depths.

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The Loreal Conundrum:

_lor _= gold_, ea_ = "let it be" (the word of Illuvatar/Eru at the Creation), _el_ = elf or star, _a_ = oh!, ach!, ack! (why is my hair green?), _al_ = no!...

I know they gave Legolas blond hair and blue eyes in the film, but in the book, his hair color is never mentioned (miles of discussion thread have been logged on the net in quest of The Final Answer to this Great Question). 

Most Elves are dark "save in the golden house of Finarfin" according to Tolkien. I always saw Legolas as blond, largely due to my first sight of him being a very nice Judy King-Reniets illo in an SF/fantasy magazine back in 1978. In the Hobbit, the Elvenking of Mirkwood (who we discover in LOTR is named Thranduil, and sends his kid, Legolas, to the Council of Elrond) is described as "a woodland king with a crown of leaves on his golden hair". 

Somewhere in the multitude of appendices and compendiums and field guides to Middle Earth it mentions that Elves have sea-grey eyes (also Rangers, Numenoreans, and pretty much all the rest of the Noble Good Guys). I don't remember Legolas' eye color specifically being mentioned, although they were constantly described as "bright". He ends up quite pale in FOTR, but the constant references to "fair" elves in the book meant "beautiful" not "pale", the inner/spiritual beauty being reflected in their physical beauty. (Tolkien Scholars with a different view can now load their plus-five bows of illiteracy-slaying with several arrows and have at me...dons mithril plate, just in case).

You DO know that Loreal is a top-selling brand of haircolor...

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Elrond's Elvish History101: 

The best way to make sense of Tolkien's love of geneology and whotheheck is related to who is to look at the charts in the back of the Silmarillion. For those of you who haven't got a copy of this Epic of Biblical Proportions lying about on your microwave; a brief intro to Elves:

**__**

Quendi: "the speakers"; all of them ...early on they were divided into Eldar and Avari:

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Eldar:

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Vanyar: anwered the call (to go to the Uttermost West), sailed to Valinor and stayed put. 

**__**

Noldor: answered the call, sailed west, got into Big Trouble and returned to Middle Earth as exiles. (something to do with a guy named Feanor, some magic rocks called Silmarils and some stolen/burned ships, as well as some dead Teleri.

**__**

Teleri: some answered the call, sailed west, got into Big Whopping Fight with Noldor, lost. Some of the Teleri had stayed behind in Middle Earth and they became 

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Sindar (Legolas's people: the Grey Elves) and **Nandor **(some of whom became **Laiquendi**/Green Elves/Silvan Elves, or, since they are descended from Grey Elves, does that make them grey-green Elves???). 

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Avari: "the unwilling" the wood-elves who refused the call and stayed in Middle Earth, also called Dark Elves and East Elves. 

The Sindar, Nandor and Laiquendi were also "the _Umanyar_" or those (Eldar) not of Aman (the Uttermost West, Eldamar). 

The Vanyar, Noldor and Teleri-who-went-to-Aman were _Calaquendi_ or "Elves of the Light".

The Avari, Laiquendi, Nandor and Sindar were "_Moriquendi"_ or Elves of the Darkness" because they had not seen the light of the two trees. Although the Sindar, being part of the Eldar-who-at least-started-on-the-great-journey, were called Grey Elves, sort of somewhere in the twilight zone.

So Legolas would be: Quendi, Eldar, Teleri, Sindar, Umanyar, and Moriquendi...???

Confused? Read the Silmarillion, it'll explain everything. Sort of.

And if you want to pass Elrond's Elvish History 102, try the History of Middle Earth (HoME): Lost Tales, Lost Tales 2, Lays of Beleriand, the Shaping of Middle Earth, etc. (to 12 volumes, I belive) all out in paperbacks you don't need a crane to lift.

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Wood-elves and the Sea-longing: 

From J.E.A. Tyler's New Tolkien Companion (Avon, 1976,1979): "After the passing of the three rings...few indeed of the Eldar...still tarried in mortal lands-though the elven-woods of Wilderland long remained peopled by the lesser kindreds. For in the hearts of the Wood-elves the Sea-longing seldom awoke, and for the most part this people never came to Eldamar. They lingered instead in Middle Earth and eventually declined altogether, sharing the fate of all those whose destiny it remains to dwell on the hither shores."

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It seems the Avari can hear the call and sail west like the Eldar, but many preferred to stay in Middle Earth. Whether they "diminished" in the way European fairy tales have it: becoming small, cute and harmless beings of nursery tales, or whether they simply became more and more bound to the mortal realm, more and more mortal themselves, Tolkien does not say.

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Personal theory: they become less "immortal" ...though the Elves I know (www.geocities.com/makenuk, the E.L.F. page), would tell you that nothing is immortal, not the sun or the moon or the stars...except perhaps the spirit ...but retain that deep empathy for other living things, the far sightedness, that sense of "psychic awareness", a love of art, music and dance, and a sense of wonder.

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What Galadriel has to say on that matter is this 

(Fellowship of the Ring, The Mirror of Galadriel, speaking to Frodo);

"Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlorien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten."

I think there may still be a few Elves about...(look verrrrry closely at that actor...or maybe that park ranger...)

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On Dogs:

The ropey haired drover's dogs of this tale are giant sized versions of real-world Comondors. They're about 25" tall, 70 or 80 pounds (about the size of a German Shepard or Malamute), always white, Hungarian in origin. The coat, curly like a poodle's, can be groomed into the ropey effect as it grows...effective against the harsh weather of its native land...and almost as good armor, as dwarf mail. They were originally versatile drover's dogs; companions on the road, guarding flocks, doing some basic herding.

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There are two basic types of sheepdog: 

The "wolfish" type, like Border Collies, which look and act like predators, with the predatory intincts toned down (unlike my favorite "wolfish" northern dogs, Siberians, Border Collies won't actually _eat_ the sheep). They herd sheep with agility, determination, and speed, responding to a blizzard of whistled commands, putting the precise sheep in the precise corner of the precise pen you want. Some have done sled-dog duty as highly obedient lead dogs.

The guard dog type, which look like sheep (big, white, fluffy) and blend into the flock, but protect it from other predators. The Comondor, the Pyranees, the Hungarian Kuvasz belong to this group. Other diverse members of this "working dog" group; Boxers, Dobermans, Rottweilers, northern dogs like Malamutes and Siberians, Akitas, Mastiffs, Newfoundlands, and St. Bernards.

In some tests, llamas and donkeys have proved to be excellent sheep guardians (they'll drive off predators). But that's another tail.

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On Horses:

I'll bet Tolkien (who, as I remember, did log some cavalry time) never tried to ride bareback with someone behind him, especially a stocky, mail-clad Dwarf who is no horseman! I have...the result of a rider bomping around behind you is you are shoved up onto the horse's sharp withers (the mountainous shoulder blade hump)...even worse, I imagine, if you are male. 

Therefore: Gimli gets his own horse, as various hobbits (and dwarves in The Hobbit) do in other parts of LOTR. Sweetgrass is an Icelandic pony. They're about 14 hands, generally duns, bays, browns, chestnuts: earth colors, solid of build (like Dwarves) and hairy (like Dwarves). They're known for their smooth "terlte" (or spelled "tolt" but with that funny little dot thingie over the "o")...a running walk (basically a "broken pace" in which the two legs of one side move ALMOST in unison) similar to the pleasant gaits of the Tennesee Walker, the Paso Fino, the Rocky Mountain Horse, and others. (A hand is four inches, and the horse is measured from the ground to the withers, the highest part of the horse's back). 14.2 hands is 14 hands, 2 inches.

I originally thought Legolas might have returned Arod to Rohan, but Arod was one of the "three empty saddles" Legolas saw when he first spotted the Riders of Rohan. Arod's (possibly beloved) Rider is dead. Eomer would likely have gifted Legolas with the horse (fair trade for 41 orcs at Helm's Deep), and they seem to have formed a bond. Legolas calls him "my friend Arod", and Arod follows him into the Paths of the Dead.

My utterly favorite moment in the book was when Legolas first meets Arod and asks the Riders to remove saddle and rein for "I need them not". (I spent a few years training my patient old half-Arab to work that way) It would have been a neat trick for the movie if they could have pulled it off; I've got a book which shows an entire 4-H drill team performing that way, met one Arab stallion (Wazir, of Raintree Egyptian Stud, owner:Betty Notley Moe, Oregon: seen in Robert Vavra's book: All Those Girls in Love With Horses) who could be ridden that way among his mares(!!!).

The logistics of teaching actors to ride in a few short weeks, much less without tack, would be pretty appalling. As it was, "Legolas" took a nose-dive in one charge and cracked a rib. 

I note however, that Shadowfax appears as he did in the book, tackless. But look closely in the stills, and in certain movie scenes, you can see the thin neck rope which is part of how the rider cues him. Perhaps there was more opportunity to use stuntriders here, and they may have wanted Shadowfax to stand out as the only horse ridden that way.

In the book, Arod's color is not mentioned, only that he is "smaller, lighter (in build, I assume) but restive and fiery". Aragorn's Rohirrim horse, Hasufel, is a great dark grey, Shadowfax is described as silver by day and like a shadow or shade at night (medium to light grey horses are like that), I always liked Alan Lee's grey Rohirrim horses, and have a thing for greys myself, so I se Arod as grey. In the film Arod (with his darkish mane) and Shadowfax (who looks white) are _grey, _most white horses are actually grey: greys are born a normal horse color and grey out, turning white or nearly so by age seven to ten. As in any species, a rare few horses are born white, often with pink skin or no color at all (albino).

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Not baaaaaaaad:

It's short, it's stout, it's bearded, it's...a goat?

I've had the pleasure of being owned by several of these charming even-toed ungulates, the latest being a lovely grey horned Pygmy (dwarf-goat) doe named Sweetgrass. A passerby noted our lone goat and asked if we needed another, they had a nice neutered Pygmy male that needed a home. He arrived in the back of an SUV, black as the sky reflected in the pools of Kheled-Zaram, with mithril ears, and a bushy beard, and no horns. Sweetgrass immediately plowed him in the side with her ample hornage and told him just whose pasture it really was.

A few weeks of goat politics later, (goat martial arts involves rearing, twisting sideways and plowing into your adversary, also skipping sideways in mad loops at a great rate of speed, useful against predators, especially if they don't climb rocks as cleverly as goats) the hornless male had demonstrated a marvelously Dwarvish determination and fortitude, turned the tables, and learned to duck under the wicked horns of his new buddy. Who rules the hay pile now!?!

Forty-two! Of course I named him Gimli.


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